Woman leading blind soldier

Place Europe: United Kingdom
Accession Number ART19568
Collection type Art
Measurement Overall: 45.5 cm x 22.5 cm x 12 cm; Overall - Conservation: 500 mm x 230 mm x 185 mm
Object type Sculpture
Physical description plaster; edition: 2/2
Maker Sheridan, Clare
Place made United Kingdom: England, Greater London, London
Date made 1917
Conflict First World War, 1914-1918
Copyright

Item copyright: AWM Licensed copyright

Description

This plaster statue of a woman leading a blind Australian soldier in uniform is an endearing image of war life in London. The piece was made in London at St Dunstan's Hospital for the Blind, as a commission from the Imperial War Museum (who still hold the original, painted version). The artist, Clare Sheridan recollected crying as she sculpted the blind soldier, finding him "beautiful and resigned and patient". The soldier is Trooper Ernest Charles Matheson, who enlisted in the 9th Light Horse in South Australia in 1914.

The work is intensely maternal and gentle. Sheridan had lost her own husband in the Great War, as well as a child not long after its birth. She found solace and strength in the physically taxing genre of sculpture.