London at War

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London at War

• Ulrike Smalley
• Curator
• Department of Art

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London during the First World War
Norman Arnold, An October Night Raid on London,
1917 Seen from the Royal College of Science ,
1918
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London during the First World War
Walter Bayes, The Underworld Taking cover in a
Tube Station during a London air raid, 1918
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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

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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 cameras 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.
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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.
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Blackout
Ruskin Spear, The Black-out, 1942
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Life goes on
Kenneth Rowntree, Foreign Service-men in Hyde
Park Early summer, 1940
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Fire fighting
Leonard Rosoman, A House Collapsing on Two
Firemen, Shoe Lane, London, EC4, 1940
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Sheltering
Henry Moore, Women and Children in the Tube, 1940
Henry Moore, Tube Shelter Perspective, 1941
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Sheltering
Edmond Xavier Kapp, Snorers Sheltering in any
Tube Station, 1941
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Sheltering
Feliks Topolski, The Warehouse Shelter in
Commercial Road, East End, 1940
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Sheltering
Edward Ardizzone, Waiting to Go Into the Tube,
1940
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Working
Ruskin Spear, Scene in an Underground Train,
1943 Workers returning from night shift
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Working
Frank Dobson, An Escalator in an Underground
Factory, 1944
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Aftermath
Anthony Gross, A Gas Main on Fire in Chelsea, 1940
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Aftermath
Edward Ardizzone, Bombed Out, 1941
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Ruined City
Muirhead Bone, St Bride's and the City after the
Fire, 29 December 1940
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Ruined City
Dennis Flanders, London Clearance of debris
between Gresham Street and St Paul's, 1941, 1942
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Ruined City
Ian Strang, London Bridge Station, London, SE1,
1943
Ian Strang, Cripplegate, London, EC1, 1943
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Ruined City
Norma Bull, Effigies of Crusaders in Round Temple
Church, London after damage enemy action, 194?
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Ruined City
Graham Sutherland, The City A fallen lift shaft,
1941
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Blitz Myth
B Howitt-Lodge, London 'Carries On', 1940
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Social Issues
Ethel Gabain, Boys from South-East London
gathering Sticks in Cookham Wood, 1940
Ethel Gabain, A Crèche, 1942-1943
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Social Issues
John Minton, Wapping, 1941
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The War Artists Advisory Committee
collectionAn 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

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The War Artists Advisory Committee
collectionAn 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

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PublicationsAndrews, Julian, Londons War. The
Shelter Drawings of Henry Moore, Lund Humphries,
2002Harries, Meirion Susie, The War Artists.
British Official War Art of the Twentieth
Century, Michael Joseph, 1983Foss, 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, 1991Stansky,
Peter William Abrahams, Londons Burning. Life,
Death Art in the Second World War, Constable
Co, 1994