# Will Longstaff artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/will-longstaff/
Profile generated: 2026-08-24T19:35:13.091Z
Quality: medium confidence, thin sources

## Artist identity

- Nationality: Australian
- Common media: Painting, Oil on linen

## About Will Longstaff

Will Longstaff (1879–1953), also recorded as William Frederick Longstaff, was an Australian painter and war artist. He is principally associated with images of the First World War and with later compositions devoted to remembrance of its dead. Public image records document works such as 8th August 1918, a battlefield composition showing prisoners and advancing artillery; Menin Gate at Midnight; Immortal Shrine; and the 1932 painting Carillon. Together, these records place military experience, memorial imagery, soldiers, and collective remembrance at the center of his documented work. Collectors may encounter his name in Australian-art, military-art, and war-commemoration contexts, while authority records also preserve several forms of his name. The present source pack does not establish a formal movement or school for Longstaff, so his work is best described through his documented occupation, nationality, subjects, and historical setting rather than through an unsupported stylistic label.

## Common works and media

The collected evidence documents paintings rather than a broad range of objects. Examples include an oil-on-linen battle scene, First World War military imagery, and postwar memorial compositions involving soldiers, monuments, remembrance, and loss. No reliable evidence in this pack establishes prints, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, posters, or editions as common parts of Longstaff's auction record.

## Market and appraisal context

Will Longstaff's market context should be assessed through documented work type, medium and support, date, and subject. The collected records particularly support comparison among paintings connected with the First World War and its commemoration. A closely related war or memorial subject may offer more useful context than an unrelated Australian painting, but subject alone does not establish authorship or equivalence. The source pack signals that public auction records exist, yet it does not provide lot-level descriptions, realized prices, condition, provenance, or attribution evidence. A defensible appraisal therefore requires verification of the individual object and comparison with public sales that genuinely match its material, date, scale, subject, and attribution status.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine public artist-identity research with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. This profile distinguishes established identity and work context from market details that require lot-level verification.

## Sources

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3568797
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Longstaff
- Art UK: https://artuk.org/discover/artists/longstaff-will-18791953
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500054066
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/96040657/
- Appraisily: https://appraisily.com/artist/will-longstaff/
- Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:8th_August_1918_(Will_Longstaff).jpg
- Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Menin_Gate_at_midnight_(Will_Longstaff).jpg
- Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Immortal_Shrine_(Will_Longstaff).jpg
- Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carillon_painted_1932_by_Capt_Will_Longstaff.jpg