Dunedin artist William Bell’s beautiful Christmas card shows a soldier dreaming of home against a backdrop of ruined Europe. It also appeared as a colour poster in New Zealand at the Front, 1917.
After the war, Bell was able to take up further art studies in England, and worked his way there as a seaman. Sadly, he died of rheumatic fever shortly after arrival in 1920. Miss Bryant of the Dunedin Public Library copied his obituary onto a copy of his Aotearoa Christmas card.
Obituary William F Bell in Otago Daily Times. Dec 2 1921, p. 3. Transcription by Elizabeth Dunbar Bryant
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![<i>Forethoughts : Being the Journal of the Fourth New Zealand Infantry Brigade Group</i>. London: Argus, [1918]](https://www.reedgallery.co.nz/__data/assets/image/0008/442088/3c.jpg)
William Francis Bell and Ernest Heber Thompson were both from Dunedin. They enrolled together in the New Zealand Rifle Brigade. From their drawings of life in the trenches, they left lasting images of the wretched conditions endured by the soldiers, often showing the wry stoicism of the Kiwi “diggers” they encountered. Ernest Heber Thompson took up further art studies in England after the war. He remained in England until his death in 1971, becoming a distinguished artist and teacher.
Forethoughts : Being the Journal of the Fourth New Zealand Infantry Brigade Group. London: Argus, [1918]
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