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This postcard features Will Longstaff's iconic artwork Menin Gate at Midnight - exclusively available at the Memorial Shop.

About the product:

• Single postcard.
• Full-colour reproduction of original artwork.
• Printed on satin art card, 350gsm.
• Postcard measures 10.5 cm (h) x 14.8 cm (w) - A6 size, landscape orientation. Printed image size varies.
• Original artwork from the Collection of the Australian War Memorial.
• Exclusive to the Memorial Shop.

The story:

The Menin Gate Memorial is dedicated to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who died in battles around Ypres, and bears the names of 55,000 men with no known grave, including more than 6,000 Australians.

Australian artist and former serviceman Will Longstaff attended a ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1917. Profoundly moved by what he witnessed, that night, unable to sleep, he returned to Menin Road, and later claimed to have had a vision of spirits of the dead rising out of the soil around him. On returning to his studio in London he painted Menin Gate at midnight in a single session. Commemorating soldiers killed on the Western Front during the First World War who have no known grave, Menin Gate at midnight has achieve the status of a national icon. The painting retains its ability to provoke an emotional response and to communicate the scale of the loss of life and the devastation of war.

Click to learn more about Will Longstaff's artwork (ART09807) - held in the Australian War Memorial's National Collection.

Image credit: Will Longstaff. Menin Gate at midnight. 1927. Oil on canvas. 137x 270 cm. Australian War Memorial, Canberra. ART09807.