In this ink and watercolour sketch, with a few bold lines and washes of colour Cadell has deftly captured a new recruit walking with an army officer. Cadell joined the Royal Scots in 1915 and this is one of a series of drawings of army life he produced before leaving for service in France. Twenty of the drawings were published in 1916 in the book ‘Jack and Tommy’, and sold to benefit the Red Cross. The brisk, economic brush-and-ink technique of these drawings seems to have been based on illustrations the Dutch Fauve painter, Kees van Dongen, made in the early 1900s, for journals such as ‘L’assiette au beurre’ and ‘Gil-Blas’.