Sargent painted the two watercolors known as "Tommies Bathing" in the summer of 1918. He had been commissioned by the British government for a painting that would commemorate the efforts of the Americans and British in World War I, so he traveled to the front in the valley of the Somme to find a subject. During his sojourn, he painted several studies and unrelated informal watercolors, including these two evocative images.
While the origin of the term "Tommy" is widely disputed, the most common explanation is that it derives from "Tommy Atkins," a fictitious name which is slang for a common soldier in the British Army, and which is known to have been used as early as 1743. The term "Tommy" was chosen as a generic name by the war office in 1815, becoming well established during the nineteenth century, but is particularly associated with the British soldiers of the First World War. In more recent times, the term has been used much less frequently, although the name "Tom" is occasionally still heard; private soldiers in the British Army's Parachute Regiment are still referred to as "Toms".
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Now, moving from the picturesque to the reality....
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| British soldiers in a farm pond near St. Eloi, Flanders, June 1917, likely after the Battle of Messines. (Two images.) |
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| British soldiers bathing in the river at Maroeuil, near Arras, 20 May 1918. |
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| British soldiers during a swim somewhere in the Somme region, France, 1916. (Two images.) |
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