SIDNEY DENNANT MOSS
Ipswich 1884 – 1946
A painter of landscapes and town scenes, Moss exhibited from 1912.
In the First World War Moss served as a private with the 95th Company Labour Corps, the 6th Battalion London Regiment (Royal Army Medical Corps) and the 84th Field Ambulance Territorial Force in France and Salonika.
This group of four lithographs are from a series of at least six images of Loos; the Army Medical Services Museum has the group, described as ‘six lithographs of the Battle of Loos’.
The main battle took place in the Autumn of 1915 across front lines running through the coalmining district around the town of Lens in the industrial heart of the Pas-de-Calais, in an otherwise rather flat landscape broken by slagheaps and the Vimy Ridge.
The medical facilities included 16 advanced medical stations, as well as 13 casualty clearing stations. Over 61,000 British casualties were sustained in the Battle of Loos.
The mining village of Loos-en-Goelle was captured by British forces on 25 September 1915.
Moss presumably was based in an advanced dressing station in the village itself, as two of the six images include the initials ‘A.D.S.’. The village was destroyed in the 1915 action, and Moss records the ruined buildings and mine head.
The lithographs are printed on uniform sheets of cream laid paper measuring 416 x 318 mm
Loos
Each image approximately 250 x 325 mm
Four companion original ‘landscape’ lithographs, 1916.
The stones signed and dated LOOS 1916.
£500 for the four together
(or £135 each)
The ruined colliery cottages in Loos were dominated by the 150 feet tall iron framework of the pit winding gear, and the long Loos Crassier (slagheap) with the railway running up to the pit head. Nicknamed by the British “Tower Bridge”, the double pithead gear towers, also known as ‘Crystal Palace’, were a landmark in the area which, before the attack, could be seen from the British front line.
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