War memorial exhibits head to Canada

When Will Longstaff's painting Menin Gate at Midnight toured in 1929, one million Australians queued to view the haunting depiction of Great War sacrifice.

That was from a population of just six million.

In today's terms, that would be more than three million lining up to see a painting, Australian War Memorial director Brendan Nelson says.

"The reason they wanted to see it was because this was the closest they would ever get to their dead son, brother, father," he said in Canberra on Friday.

Now this priceless artwork, plus the memorial's two Menin Gate lions, are being crated up for a six-month loan to the Canadian War Museum's WWI Iron Harvest exhibition.

The lions and the Longstaff painting are just as significant to Canada whose troops fell in large numbers around Ypres.

Dr Nelson says it is his favourite Australian painting.

"This is our history. It is a monument itself to sacrifice and courage and loss, a generation of grief and mourning and the pride that our nation had in terms of what had been achieved during the first world war at immense cost," he said.

The Menin Gate archway features the names of 55,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers, including 6169 Australians, killed in bitter fighting but their bodies never found.

It was opened in 1927 and Longstaff, seeking inspiration, returned at midnight completing his painting of ghostly soldiers at the Menin Gate in a single sitting.

The two stone lions, each weighing around two tonnes, date from 1822. During World War I, they flanked the medieval Menin Gate entrance to the city of Ypres.

"Almost all of the soldiers who fought in the Ypres salient in Flanders marched between the Menin Gate lions," Dr Nelson said.

Both were damaged by German shelling.

In 1935, the visiting Australian high commissioner suggested to the Ypres mayor that perhaps he might like to donate them to Australia for its sacrifice.

And so both headed Down Under. Since then they have been on display at the entrance to the war memorial.

In 2017, the lions will return to their original location at the Menin Gate for the centenary of the battle of Passchendaele.