Best in show

“Back when we were purely a corporate collection, we had this picture hanging in our office and passers-by – unaware of its full context – thought it was a lovely depiction of a beautiful summer’s day.

The longer you look at it, however, the more you get the feeling that something’s not quite right. It becomes rather eerie after a while.

And that’s because, unlike a lot of art depicting the horrors of war, this very much captures the calm before the storm.

The figure laid out in the forefront has echoes of Jesus on the cross, with those bold touches of red on his hands and his swimming trunks which are matched by the Red Cross on the ambulance tucked in the background.

This is definitely one of those pictures in which it’s possible to read all sorts of thoughts and messages whether or not they were fully intended by the artist. Does that small wooden fence in the foreground, for example, represent an unmarked grave?

What we do know, of course, is that this is one of the very few completed and intact paintings that survived the time Gunn, who is known as a painter of landscapes and swanky society portraits, spent with the Artists’ Rifles in northern France where he briefly had a rudimentary studio in the barracks.

You can tell he had hardly any materials with him. The canvas is paper-thin and the oil has been brushed over a really dry surface with very little paint applied on a very dry brush.

The frame is a simple wooden one put together at the time and it’s a wonder that it has survived so well. Gunn hardly spoke or wrote about his war experiences but we know that he lost two brothers in France and that he was gassed, which affected his health for the rest of his life.

With all that in context and knowing now what was shortly to happen in the battle of the Somme – some 20,000 British soldiers were killed on the first day alone – it’s impossible to look at this painting and not feel something of a ghostly presence.

All that picture-perfect sunlight and greenery; it’s the moment when everything was hanging in the balance for these doomed youths enjoying some rest and play before facing the awful mud and chaos of the battlefield.”

Traces of War: Landscapes Of the Western Front runs until 18 October

Selina Skipwith is the director of the Fleming Collection, London