Alan Seeger

Portrait by John Elliott of Alan Seeger (1888–1916), American poet and volunteer in the French Foreign Legion during World War I. Seeger is depicted in French military uniform with campaign hat and collar insignia. Elliott (1859–1925), an English-born artist, captured Seeger shortly before his death at the Battle of the Somme. Seeger's literary reputation rested on his verse collections and his final poem, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death," written weeks before his fatal combat. This portrait served both as commemoration and as journalistic documentation of a notable American casualty of the Great War.