Diary extracts for April 1945 to January 1946
1945:
Offered a private commission which led to several others after the war
Suddenly, when I was still in uniform I got a telegram saying a Colonel Astor from The Times wanted to see me. At his London office he said, 'The Old Etonians very much want to have a painting made. You know . . . that recently King George VI knighted the Provost of Eton on the chapel steps? And we rather thought that we would like a painting of this performance. I’m sorry that you weren’t there and we didn’t think of it before. But we wondered whether you could do it.
I said, 'Yes, well certainly it would be all right. And what sort of facilities could be given to me?’ And he said ‘Well, you can go down to Eton. I will give you a note to the provost and he will be awfully nice to you - that’s Sir Henry Marten.’ And I discovered that he was being knighted because he was the tutor to our present Queen, who was then Princess Elizabeth. He was very nice to me. And he showed me the windows where I could go up and get the best view to make drawings which I have still. But of course I had to do a lot from imagination.
8th May 1945:
VE Day - Victory in Europe - the end of the war with Germany.
2nd Sep 1945:
End of the war with Japan.
1st Jan 1946:
1 January
Painting Eton College picture (40x50) Knighting of the Provost by the King on the chapel steps. The architecture has occupied me for 2 months. Started on the statue today.
1st Jan 1946:
1st of a dozen lessons to the Cameron boys at Butts Ash.
2nd Jan 1946:
Cheque arrives for 12 gns from BBC for his talk in November on the Northern Programme for the series”Born and Bred”.
Painting all day . . . very cold in outside studio.
3rd Jan 1946:
Vivien Cutting and Mavis went into Southampton to shop, but found them quite denuded. There seems to be nothing to buy at all.
3rd Jan 1946:
Painting the figures in Eton picture
so now have a couple of months of hard labour in front of me.
4th Jan 1946:
Painting in the morning. In the afternoon made a start making Crispin’s ERF lorry (all wood). We differed a great deal as to how it should be made! Which makes progress somewhat slow.
5th Jan 1946:
In the afternoon went on with the lorry, but didn’t get far. We first tried making mudguards from coffee tins and found it unsatisfactory. So then steamed some very thin 3-ply and will hope for the best.
5th Jan 1946:
Cracknore Hard to see shipping
3 aircraft carriers, a large American liner and Île de France etc
5th Jan 1946:
Eton painting
Started the figures below the chapel, they are going to be a terrific job.
12th Jan 1946:
Finished making a wooden ERF lorry for Crispin. Made a trailer for it the next day.
12th Jan 1946:
Eton painting
put in the boys hanging on to the railings round the statue.
[unknown date]:
Eton painting
I introduced quite a number of humorous things in it, like a small boy with a catapult in the front row, for instance, who was being restrained by some other boys, and one or two Etonian hats that were being knocked off. None of this was objected to, I’m very glad to say, by the officials or Royalty.
17th Jan 1946:
Stopped at Eton to look at my subject. Mavis remarked that it looked ‘older’ than in my painting. I feel this too. The job of getting the old weathered feeling from memory is difficult. Perhaps I have got it a bit on the hot side.
17th Jan 1946:
Taking Crispin back to St George’s.
21st Jan 1946:
Reading ‘The Small Back Room’ by Nigel Balchin.
22nd Jan 1946:
Mavis to Dibden as she is the Welfare Officer for the Landgirls.
Crispin’s letter: has settled down. The boys liked his lorry and he gave a magic lantern show.
22nd Jan 1946:
Sir Henry Marten Provost of Eton ready for a sitting
23rd Jan 1946:
New Penguin books on Pasmore and Burra came.
I am sorry that Clive Bell wrote on Pasmore, it is shockingly written and stupid throughout. One or two of the paintings are splendid.
John Rothenstein writes a very good foreword on Burra. I think some of these paintings are magnificent, and others full of mannerisms and cheapness. But he certainly is a remarkable chap.
29th Jan 1946:
Depressed, as the perspective in the Eton picture appears incurably wrong, partly owing to the crushing together of the actual perspective. The large uninteresting space in the foreground looks like being troublesome too.
30th Jan 1946:
Letter from Kenneth Harrison, Don of King's College Cambridge asking me to go and paint for him 2 moderate size pictures in the Summer for 400gns!
These funny surprises always get under my ribs. I still can’t understand anyone wanting to part with filthy lucre for my paintings, particularly on such a scale.
31st Jan 1946:
Oliver Warner at the Admiralty asks him to see him about a commission to do “The Painted Hall” at Greenwich.
I feel now that I shall have to refuse this commission.
Thought of another painting I would like to do “The Man with a Sword” full-length nude.