Coup de main au clair de lune (Surprise attack in the moonlight)

French soldiers about to mount a surprise attack against the Germans in the moonlight in France in 1914 during the First World War. In the margin lower right the artist has drawn a miniature portrait of the head in right profile of the soldier in the foreground. Louis Abel-Truchet was born at Versailles, France, in 1857, and died in action on the Western Front on 9 September 1918. He was a well known French painter, etcher and lithographer who studied in Paris with two highly renowned teachers, Jules Lefebvre and Benjamin Constant. He began exhibiting at the Paris Salons about 1891.