MURALS by the North Yorkshire artist Richard Duffield are giving visitors to the Castle Museum in York a visual sense of army camp atmosphere and the devastation experienced in France during the First World War.

One work, a panoramic battlefield scene painted across a long curving wall, captures a lull in the conflict with seated soldiers refilling shell cases, while a corridor devoted to a spring offensive contrasts lush woodland with the truncated stumps of trees in no man's land blasted by the bombardment.

Mr Duffield, who works from a studio at his home in Preston under Scar, is best known for landscape paintings of the Dales and images of wildlife.

"I have been quietly doing scenic art for many, many years, " he said. "It’s just no-one has put two and two together before now."

He has produced backdrops at the National Railway Museum, Royal Armouries and the Yorkshire Museum and the Castle Museum's street scene is by his hand. Further afield, he has work in the Tower of London, Ripley’s Believe it or Not and at museums in Iceland.

"On a smaller scale, I enjoy doing full room designs for cafes, shops, such as Campbells in Leyburn, and private homes," he said.

He was recently commissioned to create a children’s room at the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton.

"When I think about it, most of the towns in the North have a room in them that I’ve done."

The Great War anniversary project came through RS Displays, a company he works with that undertakes museum commissions. Its design team put together an initial idea and produced line drawings.

"The museum also had clear ideas about what it wanted and a lot of material to use, so most of the images were taken from archive photographs. The three soldiers in the battlefield scene, for example, were soldiers we had a photograph of."

He added a platoon of cavalry in the distance to fill the wall space.

"My day-to-day work on a smaller scale is very detailed. There’s a similar challenge of creating something true to life, however there’s something about the freedom of working on a large a scale which I really enjoy."

For the Victorian street scene he need to include figures in the background and was careful to carry out research to ensure details were correct, such as the right length of hemline.

The murals took about ten weeks to complete, with the battlefield scene taking eight days.

"I particularly enjoyed the battlefield as everything fell into place with all the figures, and we had some really good photographic references to work with."

After living in Wensley until he was 14, he and his family moved to West Witton. His formative years were spent painting wildlife in Wensleydale and he later received commissions from the RSPB among others.

His larger scale scenic work started while working for a small company in Leeds on projects such as props for the TV series Heartbeat.

"I became freelance in about 2001 and my focus since has been split between wildlife and landscape painting inspired by the area around my home and the larger scale commissions."

He has pictures in the Wensleydale Gallery at Leyburn and showed landscapes and wildlife at Preston under Scar's summer art and craft exhibition.

Next year he will welcome visitors to his studio in the village after joining the Open Studios event in June for the first time.

The exhibition at the Castle Museum is ongoing.