Photo of Arthur Conan Doyle with Captain William Longstaff

About

Treasure of the Month - September 2014

William Longstaff (1879 - 1953) was an official war artist with the Australian armed forces in the First World War.

He went on to paint many allegorical paintings in which he drew on his experience during the war years. One of these paintings, 'Menin Gate at Midnight (Ghosts of Menin Gate)', depicts the spectres of countless men standing guard in the cornfields outside the Menin Gate Memorial. Longstaff painted 'The Eternal March', (which shows a long procession of the dead crossing the river Styx) nine hours after a séance which Conan Doyle also attended. Conan Doyle bought the painting.