The First Battle of Ypres #1, is a monotype on archival paper and takes inspiration from two paintings by Alfred Bastien and a battlefield map. Alfred Bastien (1873-1955) was a Belgian artist, academic, and soldier. Amongst his many works, two oil paintings exhibited at the In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres have motivated Baptist to develop his print measuring 56 x 76 centimetres. Bastien’s first paintings is titled, ‘Nieuport’ (c. 1920, oil on canvas, 85 x 198.5 cm.) It’s a study for ‘Panorama of the Battle of the Yser’ – with view of the Yser estuary with Belgian line soldiers and French naval fusiliers. The second painting is titled, ‘The Fire of Ypres’ (c. 1920, oil on canvas, 116.5 x 191 cm.) It’s a study for ‘Panorama of the Battle of the Yser’ – with the burning of the Cloth Hall on 22 November 1914.

Strands of gauze bandages (sourced from India) form lines, like capillaries in Baptist’s print. Unlike the realist drama unfolding in the oil paintings, Coelho’s cartographic print also alludes to the participation of Indian troops that is referred to in a battlefield map illustrated on p. 64 of, ‘The Indian Corps on the Western Front: A Handbook and Battlefield Guide’ (2014) by two English historians Simon Doherty and Tom Donovan. Coelho’s black and white print, both aesthetically and metaphorically, tries to find a ‘middle ground’ between the accuracy of cartographic analysis and an artist’s impression – in this case Alfred Bastien’s oil paintings. – Kris Imants Ercums, curator of Global Contemporary and Asian Art at the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, USA.

The First Battle of Ypres #1, was developed during Baptist Coelho’s year-long Artist-in-Residence, supported by and at the In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres, 2022.