The four Unknown Warriors, brought back to the UK from the battlefields of France and Belgium, are the inspiration for an exhibition of paintings on display in Westminster Abbey. The paintings by John Woodman, an art teacher at Westminster, are inspired by the four soldiers, who died on four different battlefields of World War One, and whose bodies were brought back to the UK before one was selected to be interred in the Abbey as the Unknown Warrior.

The exhibition, delayed from the centenary of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in 2020, was the result of a project which saw the artist spend time at the sites of all four battlefields – the Aisne, the Somme, Arras and Ypres. He made studies of the landscapes as they are now before working on the oil paintings for the exhibition. Each painting has been created across four separate canvases, one for each unknown warrior and with each canvas the same size as a Commonwealth War Grave.

Once complete, the canvases were taken to the battlefields in Belgium and France which inspired the paintings; photographs of this are also included in the exhibition.

Pupils who visited the exhibition were visibly impressed by the scale and significance of the paintings. Mattia (Remove, GG) said “I really enjoyed visiting the Lands of Unknown Warriors exhibition and I thought the artwork was mesmerising. With the careful suggestions of forms and figures by gentle brush strokes, the paintings symbolise the four battlefields where the bodies of the Unknown Warriors were found. I particularly appreciated the photos of the paintings placed in their respective battlefields as it shows how the paintings fit in perfectly with their backgrounds.”