A key work by official British war artist Paul Nash, capturing his firsthand experience on the Western Front during World War I. The night scene depicts three soldiers standing on a trench fire step, startled by the brilliant flare of a star shell illuminating the devastated battlefield. To the left lies a flooded shell-hole with three additional soldiers beyond it, set against a ruined woodland of shattered tree stumps. Incorporating elements of Modernism, Vorticism, and Expressionism, Nash turns the destruction of war into a stark, haunting, geometric landscape.