Paul Nash, who was originally trained as a painter, was an official war artist in both world wars. His landscapes, like this scene of First World War devastation, were frequently imbued with powerful symbolism and subvert the aesthetics of traditional landscape painting. The print is a lithograph, but the style echoes that of a woodcut. Both techniques were associated with popular communication. The print was a design for a poster advertising an exhibition of war pictures at the Leicester Galleries, London in 1918.