Henry Martens

Henry Martens spent years sketching battles from the ground up, dodging the same cannon fire he later painted. He once traded rations for a wounded soldier’s sketchbook, only to realize the drawings were his own. His watercolor Syrian Travel shows the chaos behind the headlines: a camel laden with mail, a drummer boy with frostbitten fingers, and the sky lit by distant explosions. Look up this one to see how war art feels when the artist was also a target.