'Tracks to Beuville', near Caen Enemy position on ridge to right

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'Tracks to Beuville', near Caen Enemy position on ridge to right

Thomas Hennell (1903-1945)

Price

£650

Signed

Inscribed with title on reverse

Medium

Ink

Dimensions

9 ¼ x 12 inches

Provenance

Michael MacLeod (Hennell biographer) via the Estate of Thomas Hennell

Exhibited

'Thomas Hennell: A Love of the Land', Chris Beetles Gallery, London, March-April 2026

On 11 June 1944 Thomas Hennell (and Edward Ardizone) left Portsmouth for Normandy to record the allied positions, arriving just five days after the D-Day landings. Hennell recorded allied activity at Bénouville and Ranville, without the capture of these two vitally strategic bridges the relief of the city of Caen, eight miles away, wouldn’t have been possible.
Biéville-Beuville is a small town north of Caen and just west of Bénouville and Ranville.

'From the middle of June, and for the next two months, his base was a small house near Caen, where he lodged with Captain Derrick Knight of the Army Film Unit. Hennell said that Knight was "intensely helpful" in suggesting subjects for him and in finding transport to distant locations, "by which means my scope & efficiency are much improved". '
Jessica Kilburn, Thomas Hennell. The Land and the Mind, London: Pimpernel Press, 2021, page 282

Mounted