This original ink wash sketch was reproduced as one of the 70 lithographs in Sarrut’s British and Indian Troops in Northern France, published in Arras in 1920. It shows two members of the 40th Pathans, a regiment made up of soldiers recruited from the Northwest Frontier, who belonged to an Iranian ethnic group, many of whom were speakers of the Pashtun language. They are operating what looks to be a Vickers a machine gun in the foreground, with two other turbaned soldiers standing in the background. The 40th Pathans would experience heavy losses on the Western Front, where they fought in the Second Battle of Ypres, the Battle of Aubers Ridge and at Loos. In the less than nine months they spent in France, the regiment suffered 800 casualties.
Paul Sarrut was a French soldier, posted to the British Army as a military liaison officer and interpreter. A graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he worked as a professional artist before enlisting in August 1914. He served as a translator for both British and Indian troops in France, and took the opportunity to sketch portraits of the diverse characters he encountered. In 1914 he was posted to Marseille, where he encountered many members of the Indian Corps as they arrived in France.
The original artwork for another of the lithographs in British and Indian Troops in Northern France, a pencil portrait of Sepoy Harnam Singh, 34th Sikh Pioneers, sold in the Bonhams Islamic and Indian Art sale on 11 June 2020 for £15,063. It is now in the collection of the National Army Museum (NAM. 2020-07-14-1-1).
