Le retour de Védrines, Verdun 1916 (The Return of Védrines, Verdun 1916), Maurice Busset

Busset joined the French air force (Aéronautique Militaire) in 1914 and became a prolific visual chronicler of aerial warfare during WWI. In this composition—one of the 103 works by the artist in the Carlson Collection—Busset celebrates the return of the famous French aviator Jules Charles Toussaint Védrines (1881–1919) after a reconnaissance mission near Verdun, a major battleground of the war. Before WWI, Védrines raced aircraft and was the first pilot to fly more than 100 miles per hour. He was also known for dropping leaflets promoting support for French aircraft over the Chamber of Deputies in Paris.
This work depicts Védrines in his Caudron G.3 biplane from the perspective of another pilot, whose left hand is near an inclinometer, a device for measuring the angular pitch of an aircraft. This inclinometer is the kind used on Bleriot monoplanes, another aircraft favored by Védrines and often flown by him during more than 1,000 hours of reconnaissance missions.