Menin Gate at Midnight

Will Longstaff (Ballarat, 1879 - London, 1953) was an Australian painter of landscapes, allegorical works and war scenes.  During the First World War, he had served as a Captain in the Australian Imperial Force, where he occupied an important role as Camouflage Officer to the 2nd Australian Division.  He was also present at the inauguration of the Menin Gate on 24 July 1927.  According to his own version of events, he was unable to sleep that night - such was the impression that the monument and the other war cemeteries in the region had made upon him.  Around midnight, he got up and decided to go for a walk.  His route took him back to the site of the new memorial.  Whilst there he had a vision, in which he saw an army of dead soldiers rise up out of the ground in front of the Menin Gate and march off eastwards, back in the direction of the battlefields.  Once he had returned to London, Longstaff decided to commit this vision to canvass.  The result was “The Menin Gate at Midnight”, an allegorical painting based loosely on Field Marshall Plumer’s famous remark during the inauguration of the memorial: “He is not missing, he is here!” 

The work enjoyed an instant and improbable success and has contributed in no small measure to the mythology surrounding the Menin Gate.  Originally, the painting was only available for viewing in Longstaff’s studio in Buckingham Palace Road, in London.  It was also in London that the painting received its first widespread public exposure, when it appeared in the “Graphic Weekly” on Christmas Eve, 1927.  Two weeks later, it was purchased by Lord Woolavington for the princely sum of 2,000 guineas - at that time, probably the largest amount ever paid for the work of an Australian painter. The nobleman donated the canvass to the Government of Australia and for a time it hung in Australia House, home of the Australian diplomatic mission in London.  It was here that the work was viewed with an approving eye by the members of the Imperial War Graves Commission - including architect, Reginald Blomfield - on 19 March 1928.  A little earlier, King George V had asked for the painting to be brought to Buckingham Palace, so that he could view it in private.  In April 1928 Longstaff’s masterpiece was put on public exhibition in Manchester and in May it moved on to Glasgow, where it attracted more than 3,000 visitors per day during its two-week showing.  On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Armistice and scarcely a year after its creation, the painting appeared as a kind of mini-poster in the centrefold of the “Illustrated London News”. 

Success in England was followed by even greater success in Australia.  During a three week period in February 1929, no fewer than 35,000 Australians queued up to view the painting in Melbourne Town Hall.  Similar public exhibitions were later organised in Hobart, Launceston, Sydney and Brisbane.  At the Sydney exhibition, the painting was displayed alongside a scale model of the Menin Gate, so that relatives could see the precise location of the panel on which their loved one was remembered. As a result of its popularity, hundreds of prints of “The Menin Gate at Midnight” were sold throughout Australia during the 1930’s.  The proceeds were donated towards the construction of the Australian National Memorial - the building where Longstaff’s enigmatic work is preserved and exhibited. 

On the initiative of the Australian War Memorial and to coincide with the 30,000th Last Post (9 July 2015) the painting is now on display in Ypres for the first time