London at War

Ulrike SmalleyCurator

Department of Art

London during the First World War

Norman Arnold, An October Night Raid on London, 1917: Seen from the Royal College of Science , 1918

London during the First World War

Walter Bayes, The Underworld: Taking cover in a Tube Station during a London air raid, 1918

Second World WarThe War Artists’ Advisory Committee

- founded 1939 by Kenneth Clark (Director National Gallery)

- employed artists on a salaried basis, commissioned paintings and bought material sent in by artists

- collected c 6000 works of art by more than 400 artists, covering the home front, all military branches and various theatres of war

- war art was exhibited in London, the UK and neutral countries, as well as used to illustrate numerous publications

War Pictures by British Artists ‘Blitz’, published 1942, Introduction by J.B. Morton‘Those who hold that to tell the truth is the most effective from of propaganda will find their demand satisfied by the pictures reproduced in this book.’

‘Air Raids’, published 1943, Introduction by Stephen Spender‘In this war, by “War Pictures” we mean, pre-eminently, paintings of the Blitz.[...] The background to this war, corresponding to the Western Front in the last war, is the bombed city; [...]’

War Pictures by British Artists, introduction by R.H. Wilenski, no publication date‘There is a place for the descriptive artist because there are aspects of descriptive recording which, in fact, are beyond the camera’s power; and there is a place also for the subjective artist because it is only in the totalitarian slave states that individual impressions and comments are feared and made taboo.’

War Pictures by British Artists, published 1942, introduction by R. Gleadow

‘The business of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee is to set painters, draughtsmen and sculptors to make “records” of the war. Records may be of facts, but they may also be of ideas and emotions. […] The records of facts, events, emotions and ideas which these artists are making for the Government, now at last their eager patron, are a small, sheer gain to set for all time against the hideous waste of war; and though they cannot be fully worthy of their vast and awful subject, they may, like faded relics in a forgotten drawer, one day faintly stir the curiosity, the pity and perhaps the envy of generations more free and careless than ours, by giving them some hint of what was done and felt and seen by their forbears, young and old, in these hard, proud times.’

Blackout

Ruskin Spear, The Black-out, 1942

Life goes on

Kenneth Rowntree, Foreign Service-men in Hyde Park: Early summer, 1940

Fire fighting

Leonard Rosoman, A House Collapsing on Two Firemen, Shoe Lane, London, EC4, 1940

Sheltering

Henry Moore, Women and Children in the Tube, 1940

Henry Moore, Tube Shelter Perspective, 1941

Sheltering

Edmond Xavier Kapp, Snorers Sheltering in any Tube Station, 1941

Sheltering

Feliks Topolski, The Warehouse Shelter in Commercial Road, East End, 1940

Sheltering

Edward Ardizzone, Waiting to Go Into the Tube, 1940

Working

Ruskin Spear, Scene in an Underground Train, 1943: Workers returning from night shift

Working

Frank Dobson, An Escalator in an Underground Factory, 1944

Aftermath

Anthony Gross, A Gas Main on Fire in Chelsea, 1940

Aftermath

Edward Ardizzone, Bombed Out, 1941

Ruined City

Muirhead Bone, St Bride's and the City after the Fire, 29 December 1940

Ruined City

Dennis Flanders, London: Clearance of debris between Gresham Street and St Paul's, 1941, 1942

Ruined City

Ian Strang, London Bridge Station, London, SE1, 1943

Ian Strang, Cripplegate, London, EC1, 1943

Ruined City

Norma Bull, Effigies of Crusaders in Round Temple Church, London: after damage enemy action, 194?

Ruined City

Graham Sutherland, The City: A fallen lift shaft, 1941

Blitz Myth

B Howitt-Lodge, London 'Carries On', 1940

Social Issues

Ethel Gabain, Boys from South-East London gathering Sticks in Cookham Wood, 1940

Ethel Gabain, A Crèche, 1942-1943

Social Issues

John Minton, Wapping, 1941

The War Artists’ Advisory Committee collection:

An objective record?

What is emphasised?

- destruction of cultural heritage, predominance of ruined churches and historic buildings: barbarity of the enemy, focal points for national identification

- communal shelters: London as a close knit community

-Spirit of the Blitz: ‘London can take it’, ‘we are in this together’

The War Artists’ Advisory Committee collection:

An objective record?What is missing?

- few images focusing on the destruction of private homes, virtually no images showing the dead and wounded

- private shelters (Anderson shelters in back gardens), people sheltering in their homes, or people leaving London for the night

- no indication of the sharp rise in crime rates and juvenile delinquency

Publications

Andrews, Julian, London’s War. The Shelter Drawings of Henry Moore, Lund Humphries, 2002

Harries, Meirion & Susie, The War Artists. British Official War Art of the Twentieth Century, Michael Joseph, 1983

Foss, Brian, War Paint. Art,War, State and Identity in Britain 1039-1945, Yale University Press, 2007

Mellor, David ed., A Paradise Lost. The Neo-Romantic Imagination in Britain 1935-55, Lund Humphries, 1993

Sillars, Stuart, British Romantic Art and the Second World War, Macmillan, 1991

Stansky, Peter & William Abrahams, London’s Burning. Life, Death & Art in the Second World War, Constable & Co, 1994