In decades since the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, the painting achieved a mythic status and stirred Australian politicians to nominate John Simpson Kirkpatrick for a Victoria Cross.
The populist lobbying ended when an inquiry punctured the myth of Simpson, revealing the English naval deserter showed the same valour on the battlefield as scores of other soldiers. Moreover the subject of Moore-Jones' work is New Zealand stretcher-bearer Dick Henderson, who served in Gallipoli and on the Western Front.
British-born Moore-Jones moved to New Zealand with his family as a young boy in the 1880s. He studied painting, married his art teacher and moved to Sydney. In 1908 he was back in Auckland, teaching classes at the Ladies' College in Remuera, which his mother ran.
When war broke out, Moore-Jones was in London and, in his mid-40s, too old to enlist. He shaved his hair, cut his moustache, lied about his age and signed on to the NZ Expeditionary Force.
Posted to the 1st Company of Engineers, the soldier-artist went ashore at Anzac Cove and produced drawings and sketches of the terrain which the field commanders used for their battle plans. In November 1915 Moore-Jones suffered a wound to his drawing hand which forced his evacuation from the Ottoman conflict but did not slow his artistic production.
Recuperating in Birmingham, he turned out dozens of watercolours of the Anzac conflict which drew large crowds when shown in London. In 1916 he returned to New Zealand and a teaching job in Hamilton. During this time he produced as many as six works on Simpson and the donkey, one of which is expected to reach $200,000 at auction this month.
In 1918, rather belatedly, NZ appointed Nugent Welch, George Edmund Butler and Alfred Pearse as war artists.
Their works, and those of many other unofficial artists, can be seen online in the National Collection of War Art maintained by Archives NZ.
Among the dozens of works are a series by William Frederick Bell.
Dunedin-born Bell gave his occupation as artist when he enlisted in 1915. In Europe, the 20-year-old rifleman impressed as a sniper and with his forays towards the enemy lines.
But his legacy survives in his ink and watercolour drawings from the front which convey a feeling for the conflict from a soldier's perspective.
Bell was a serving soldier and his images reflect the experience of the rank-and-file.
Christmas Greetings from Somewhere in France, 1916-1917 shows snow falling on a soldier in a shelled landscape, Grave in Silhouette from 1918 has a dark cross beside a mound of earth and the frustration of a footslogger is evident in a drawing showing a private with a heavy pack having words with a soldier enjoying a cigarette.
[Soldier 1]: "Wot, goin' to the trenches?"
[Soldier 2]: "No y'fool, I'm goin' fishin'!"
A coloured postcard dated 1917 depicts a New Zealander in his distinctive lemon-squeezer hat, resting on a milestone engraved with the phrase "France to New Zealand, 13,000 miles." Smoke from his cigarette in a cloud above his head frames the word 'Aotearoa'. It speaks of homesickness and perhaps loneliness.
Bell returned to NZ in 1919 and secured a grant to further his career. He returned to London but ill-health dogged his ambitions. He died, in 1920, of rheumatic fever, and is buried in the City of London Cemetery.
