Smith (Percy John Delf, British artist-soldier, printmaker, calligrapher and book designer, 1882-1948) Collection of 22 drawings produced while on The Western Front, including studies of fellow soldiers at rest in their bunkers, views of dugout entrances, including 'Entrance to the officers'/ dugout. (C.O., Capt. W.B. Macgeorge)', soldiers hauling artillery and machinery, a working tractor, sites of destruction and ruins of buildings, amongst others, 17 pencil and black chalk, 5 in pen and ink, some with inscriptions and dates, a few signed, on various papers, various sizes between 120 x 95 mm (4 3/4 x 3 3/4 in) and 200 x 300 mm (7 7/8 x 11 3/4 in), some folded and creases, some with rough edges, minor surface dirt, all unframed, circa 1916-1918; together with two signed etchings, including 'A tractor of the 15" Howitzer in a wood in France, 1917', from an edition of 35, the other not inscribed, but of the Howitzer itself, numbered from an edition of 20, both on buff wove paper, each platemark approx. 214 x 162 mm (8 3/8 x 6 3/8 in), good margins, the latter with some marginal loss in the lower left corner, unframed, 1917; and two portraits of soldiers, 'The Battery Ammunitions Mate' and 'The Battery Carpenter', watercolours, signed, inscribed and dated in pencil, each approx. 255 x 165 mm (10 x 6 1/2 in), presented in one mount under glass, framed, 1916 (25)

Provenance: Private collection (bought in the late 1990s)

⁂ Important collection of drawings by an unauthorised artist-soldier, working from one of the main theatres of war during the First World War. Including intimate and detailed depictions of life in the trenches, and on the spot records of total destruction to the surrounding land.

"Mr. Percy Smith was a gunner. He was one of the crew - it consisted of 110 men of the Royal Marine Artillery- of a fifteen-inch howitzer [...] We may be thankful that Mr. Percy Smith, between working his gun and observing for it, kept his sketch book handy, for here that old scene above the Ancre Valley, and on the Thiépval plateau, lives again. It is not there today." [H.M. Tomlinson, Introduction for Sixteen Drypoints and Etchings, A Record of the Great War, 1930]