ANZACS

This image in which two Anzac soldiers stand with their hands on their hips and slouch hats over their eyes. A third sits to the left smoking a pipe. Behind them another Anzac sits in a horse-drawn wagon loaded with goods. The rising sun is depicted on the left hand side of the image and there is a French village in the distance and two rounded trees in the upper right.

French artist Jean-Emile Laboureur was a prolific printmaker and illustrator. Building on the analytical and geometric style of Cubism, Laboureur developed a decorative style that was distinctly his own. During the First World War he served as a French interpreter with the British Expeditionary Forces. Laboureur made a series of ten woodcuts in 1918 portraying types of soldiers ('Imagerie de l'arriere'. published in a total edition of 445). He continued to work on these subjects in the 1920s and this work, 'Anzacs', was completed in 1921, and printed later. The first state does not have the flowers between the feet of the two standing soldiers, and does not have the monogram.