NY museum installs WWI painting of wounded British soldiers

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City museum is installing John Singer Sargent painting’s depicting British soldiers wounded in a World War I gas attack.

The American artist’s 8-foot-by-12-foot (2.4-meter-by-3.6-meter) oil on canvas titled “Gassed” is being mounted Tuesday in the New-York Historical Society’s museum on Central Park West as part of a new exhibit, “World War I Beyond the Trenches,” opening Memorial Day weekend.

The exhibit, which runs through Sept. 3, commemorates this year’s 100th anniversary of the U.S. entering WWI.

The Sargent’s 1919 painting, on loan from the Imperial War Museum in London, is being displayed in New York for the first time. It depicts a line of British soldiers blinded by mustard gas being led to the rear. The soldiers, with bandages covering their eyes, trudge past similarly wounded comrades lying on the ground.