Sentinelle (9h 1914 à Carnoy) (Sentinel 9h at Carnay 1914) 1914

Figure of a French soldier wearing a thick trench coat on sentinel duty in a trench on the Western Front in France during the First World War. In the margin lower right the artist has drawn a miniature portrait of the head and shoulders of the soldier. 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.