This, Steer's first exhibited work, is a portrait of Mr. Bick, brother-in-law of John Kemp, the master of the Gloucester School of Art where Steer first attended, and where this portrait was in fact painted, probably in 1881. The date 1883 must be a later addition, perhaps for the Royal Academy, as Steer was in Paris that year. The ‘war’ must have been the Sudan War which began in 1881 after the revolt of the Mahdi and dragged on for ten years. [http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/steer-what-of-the-war-n05618]