Critical Thinking

Critical Essay

John Singer Sargent’s Gassed was painted in 1918. The painting is a depiction of the war that had just ended not to long before John Singer Sargent was contracted to do the painting. In the painting the sky is a gray, dark, gloomy color. There are bodies of dead and wounded soldiers scattered around the battle field. A lot of the soldiers have bandages wrapped around there heads because of mustard gas that would blind them. The center of the painting is focused on ten soldiers all of them have their hand on the man in front of them so that they are in a line, there is one medical worker in the front of the line guiding the men. The soldiers need to be in that line because they too had been wounded by the mustard gas and had there had bandaged up so they could not see. You can see in the right hand corner wires of the medical tent that the men are being taken to.

Personally I like the painting very much. One reason why I like it is because it is about soldiers and I am a very big supporter of the military. The second reason I like it is because it is not painted to show the light side of war, it makes you take a minute and think about the cost of war. The part of the painting I find the most interesting is the fact that John Singer Sargent put bandages on the soldier’s heads. It shows how much thought he put into the concept of the painting, that he really took the time to think about what he was doing and what he wanted people to see. The compelling part of the painting is the way it makes you feel when you look at it, there is the feeling of not being able to look away from it. The despair that is shown in the painting just makes your heart hurt for all of them men who get wounded or killed in the war. The way that John Singer Sargent made this painting I believe that he did it in such a way to challenge the people living in that time to not forget the sacrifice that those men made. And to help the people years later down the road to not...