In this unfinished painting the artist depicts off-duty Allied soldiers walking through a Northern French town. The seemingly relaxed atmosphere with children playing around them perhaps anticipates the end of the war.

The son of Russian-Jewish émigrés, Freedman was born in London and trained at the Royal College of Art. In 1935 he designed the official coronation stamp for George V’s silver jubilee. Possibly influenced by his Royal College tutor, Paul Nash, an Official War Artist in both wars, Freedman joined the British army as an Official War Artist himself in 1940. He was subsequently deployed in France together with Edward Ardizzone and Edward Bawden, both noted illustrators. Working initially with the British Expeditionary Force in France, then with the Admiralty, Freedman not only depicted scenes of military headquarters and behind-the-scenes warfare planning, but also produced illustrations and typography for wartime information posters.