English: A line of soldiers (at right) trek through a muddy, shelled, and barren landscape, while searchlights in the distance scan the evening sky. The title of this A.Y. Jackson painting suggests that the area had once been heavily wooded, a powerful comment on the war’s devastation of the natural landscape. The most significant of all A. Y. Jackson's war paintings, A Copse, Evening is hugely indebted to the example of the English war artist Paul Nash, whom the Canadian artist greatly admired. On viewing it for the first time, Canadian art critic Barker Fairley wrote: "This must be one of the most enduring pictures in the collection.... It owes its success to ... its glacial light prospect ... a phosphorescent beauty and almost a fascination that yet in no way detracts from the grimness of the conception."