- Title:
The Flight from Belgium
- Date:
- 1914
- Medium:
- Aquatint, hard- and soft-ground etching, stipple etching, drypoint, roulette work and burnishing on moderately thick, moderately textured, cream wove paper
- Dimensions:
- Sheet: 20 1/16 x 23 1/16 inches (51 x 58.6 cm), Plate: 17 1/16 x 19 7/16 inches (43.4 x 49.4 cm), and Image: 17 x 19 3/8 inches (43.2 x 49.2 cm)
- Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Inscribed in graphite in artist's hand, lower left to lower center below image: "inv del et imp."; inscribed in graphite, lower left: "Edittion [sic] 35 only"; inscribed in graphite, lower right: "The Flight from Belgium - 1914."; inscribed in graphite, lower right: "1966.40.1"; inscribed in graphite, lower right: "Edittion [sic] - 35"; inscribed in graphite, lower left on back: "11021"
Marked lower left below image: "WLH" (encircled) blind-stamped in monogram; marked lower center on back: "STATON BROS | FINE ARTS | GERMANTOWN, PHILA" written in a circular design on a sticker
Lettered lower right within image: "WLH" (encircled) in monogram
Signed in graphite, lower left to lower center below image: "W Lee Hankey inv del et imp."
- Credit Line:
- Yale Center for British Art, The G. Allen Smith Collection, transfer from the Yale University Art Gallery
- Copyright Status:
- © Estate of the Artist
- Accession Number:
- B1994.4.510
- Classification:
- Prints
- Collection:
- Prints and Drawings
- Subject Terms:
- baby | cart | child | escape | fear | figures | fleeing | historical subject | horse (animal) | infant | landscape | line | man | migration | military art | monochrome | refugees | sadness | trees | wagon | walking | war | woman | world war | World War, 1914-1918
- Associated Places:
- Belgium | Europe
- Access:
- View by request in the Study Room [Request]
Note: The Study Room is open by appointment. Please visit the Study Room page on our website for more details. - Link:
- https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:23049
- Export:
- XML
- IIIF Manifest:
- JSON
YCBA Collections Search
William Lee Hankey, 1869–1952, British, The Flight from Belgium, 1914
Rupert Brooke served with the Royal Naval Division in the retreat from Antwerp. He wrote in a letter to the American poet Leonard Bacon on November 11, 1914 (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library): "I marched through Antwerp, deserted, shelled & burning, one night & saw ruined houses; dead men and horses. . . . And the whole heaven and earth was lit up by the glare from the great lakes and rivers of burning petrol, hills & spires of flame. That was like Hell, a Dantesque Hell, terrible. But later I saw what was a truer Hell. Hundreds of thousands of refugees, their goods on barrows & hand carts & perambulators & waggons, moving with infinite slowness out into the night. Two unending lines of them, the old men mostly weeping, the women with hard white drawn faces, the children playing or crying or sleeping." Gallery label for Doomed Youth The Poetry and the Pity of World War I (Yale Center for British Art, 1999-06-22 - 1999-09-26)
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