Wounded Horses Returning from the Front, France, 1918

Oil on canvas by Algernon Talmage, signed and dated '18', 1918. Exhibited in the Canadian War Memorial Exhibition' at the Royal Academy in 1919.

In 1918, Algernon Talmage was commissioned by The Canadian War Memorials Fund to go to France to paint two paintings to illustrate the Canadian War effort. However, he produced 25 in all. Between the June and September, he spent nearly three months in Le Havre at the No 1 Canadian Veterinary Hospital. He then travelled to the Cambrai front, remaining there until mid-October.

This painting depicts a scene on the road to Héninel, near the Cambrai Front in Pas-de-Calais. A Canadian Mobile Veterinary unit is taking wounded horses to an evacuating station, so that they may be returned by train to a base hospital. The smoke from German shelling can be seen on the horizon.

It was exhibited in the 'Canadian War Memorial Exhibition' at the Royal Academy of Art in January 1919 under the title 'A Mobile Veterinary Unit' (no. 55). In 1919, Talmage painted a larger version of this composition, entitled 'A Mobile Veterinary Unit in France'. That canvas is held in the collections of the Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, and hangs in the Senate Chamber of the Canadian Houses of Parliament.

It is believed that the painting was exhibited under another title, 'The Road to Henin', in four exhibitions of Canadian war art held in London, New York, Montreal and Toronto in 1919, and in later, similar exhibitions.