War Department - Street Barricade at Château-Thierry - 1918 - T-Shirt

A 1918 watercolour looks down a French town street past a heavy barricade of barrels and rubble, with a lone soldier standing exposed on top of the heap.

Visual Elements & Composition

The barricade fills the foreground in heavy charcoal tones, with a large cask lying on its side at lower left and broken timber and planks piled across the roadway. Against it, the town opens up in lighter values: cream-washed houses, steep terracotta roofs, and a church tower with a small dome and spire. A horse-drawn cart crosses the cobbles, and a signboard reading COIFFEUR marks one façade. The soldier, in dark uniform and helmet, stands at right looking out over the barrier, while a small aircraft crosses the dusty blue-grey sky. The work is built in watercolour and wash over pencil, with olive green trees closing the skyline.

Meaning & Symbolism

The barricade is the subject of the picture, and it marks this street as a front-line position in a town still held under fire. Obstructions like this were built from whatever came to hand, here barrels and debris, to slow an enemy advance and give cover to the men behind them. The soldier standing high on the heap conveys the watchful, precarious nature of that duty. Set against the intact houses and the church tower, the scene shows how the fighting reached into ordinary streets while the life of the town carried on in the distance. The drawing is dated 1918 and belongs to the wartime series of images made to record the Allied effort in France, the original work produced by the American Expeditionary Forces.

Wearing the Street

A street scene wraps naturally across the chest of a tee, where the barricade can sit at the centre of the view and the church tower and rooftops rise above it. The soldier's position on the heap gives the composition its focal point, so the eye lands where the picture's tension is strongest.