Colin Gill

Colin Gill was an English, World War I–era painter whose experience as a camouflage officer with the British Army deeply informed the mural commissions he received after service. Before the army, Gill studied painting in London and Rome. In 1918, after five years of service, Gill was invalided; still determined to participate in Britain’s war efforts, he offered to become a wartime artist, a documentor and analyzer of the historic battles. He was stationed in France to complete sketches and studies for a war memorial when the British War Memorials Committee commissioned a mural from Gill. The resulting painting, Heavy Artillery (1918) is one of his most notable works. Gill spent his later life completing mural and portrait commissions. The accomplished veteran and painter passed away in 1940, a year after the commencement of World War II.