The Ranges (Camp at Sunrise), 1915

Painting by Homer Watson of WWI soldiers in an open field with forested mountains in the distance. A group stands behind a row of soliders lying on the ground who are pointing their rifles at small targets across the field.

Homer Watson, The Ranges (Camp at Sunrise), 1915, oil on canvas, 152 x 181 cm, Canadian War Museum, Ottawa.

The painting today known as Camp at Sunrise was originally exhibited as The Ranges, one of a handful of military-themed canvases that Watson painted during and immediately after the First World War. General Sam Hughes, Canada’s Minister of Militia, requested that Watson document recruitment and training at Camp Valcartier in Quebec.


This canvas is clearly the work of someone at home with landscape painting but who does not usually make human activity the dominant element in his art. As the Montreal Herald put it, Watson depicted “temporary events in a permanent setting.”

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The Ranges (Camp at Sunrise) - Art Canada