It was one of the bloodiest clashes in history and happened exactly 100 years ago. The Battle of the Somme, which took place between July and November 1916 around the upper reaches of the River Somme in France, ended with more than one million men wounded or killed.

As one of the UK events to mark the centenary, Leighton House Museum is displaying the recently-painted series “Seven Halts on The Somme” by Hughie O’Donoghue.

The works are painted in intense colors that reflect the brutality of trench warfare. There is bright green, like the virgin fields the young soldiers fought over; deep brown, reminiscent of the muddy battlefield; and scarlet, recalling the blood spilled and the poppies that grew back after the guns had gone silent.

The semi-abstract series references places where the army halted. O’Donoghue visited these locations years later, and says in a statement: “These paintings are a meditation in concrete form on past events, built up in successive layers, mirroring the way that an archaeologist removes layers to reveal a story.”

In addition, and crucially, each work is inspired by an individual soldier. The artist spent many months poring over the letters and diaries from World War I in the Eton College Archives, where he was in residence at the Drawing Schools in 2013 and 2014.

Each work is a square canvas with dimensions of five feet and one inch — a reference to the minimum height that men had to be to qualify for service.

“Hughie O’Donoghue: Seven Halts on The Somme” opened to coincide with the anniversary of the start of the battle, and runs through October 2 at the Leighton House Museum.