War Artist...

1st Jul 1939:

Took painting of 'Robin Hood’s Town’ in to Southampton Art Gallery for the ‘Adult Education’ exhibition. Saw Conran and had a talk with him.

2nd Jul 1939:

Started painting of ‘Antwerp'

4th Jul 1939:

Painting all day, started work on Cathedral tower [on 'Antwerp']. The problem of tone values will be interesting, but the depth of the composition will have to depend on design as  already I am using pure black.

14th Jul 1939:

Rex [of the Redfern gallery] says Munnings is going to work to get me on the list of next candidates for A.R.A.

17th Jul 1939:

Drawing for a small painting of thatching going on next door (16x20), later purchased by Sir Gerald Kelly

3rd Aug 1939:

Territorial camp at East Boldre flooded out. 

Conran rang to say Mrs King Farlowe was offering the [Southampton] Art Gallery a Suddaby, and of course, one of hers as well. The first to be a gift from her and the second a gift from Rowland! She is a cough drop!

5th Sep 1939:

British planes dropped tons of leaflets on Germany

Had birthday tea for Father which he evidently enjoyed very much [His 72^nd birthday was on the 1^st Sept]

6th Sep 1939:

Mauretania and Aquitania etc are being painted dark grey. Everyone in Southampton carrying gas masks in cardboard cases (they look very silly)

Started to learn milking cows at King’s farm.

9th Sep 1939:

Saw Warwick Castle coming in after she had evaded submarines chasing her

11th Sep 1939:

Card from Nan Kivell saying he hopes the Contemporary Art Society will purchase the large ‘Antwerp’ (which he has never seen!)'

14th Sep 1939:

We motored up to London with ‘Antwerp’ and ‘Ouse at York’ to the Redfern Gallery. Nan Kivell didn’t think the former suitable for the Tate Gallery. So wants me to do another! and have my show in November as "no one else is having one” (had been scheduled for December)

As far as we can tell "another" Antwerp was never painted and it is the one mentioned that the Tate bought for their collection.

15th Sep 1939:

Southampton full of troops ready to leave for France.

They do not look happy.

16th Sep 1939:

Started digging air raid shelter in sunk garden. This is compulsory for schools, and as ours starts on Tuesday, something has to be done about it.

16th Sep 1939:

The Art Gallery is open again but the art school is closed. Could only give Mavis £1 for housekeeping.

18th Sep 1939:

Painting in the afternoon. Activities of Man.

10th Oct 1939:

A note from Pittsburgh USA saying my painting of Southampton was sold, and a cheque enclosed for $250 which is at present is about £61.14/- This painting (18x50) was done last December and seemed to be a beginning of a richer phase in my work.”

16th Oct 1939:

Finished painting of Dunkirk 40x50, a reminiscence of my trip up the Scheldt.

16th Nov 1939:

Went up to London to look after the Redfern Gallery for a few days, Nan Kivell having gone to Paris for the weekend.

18th Nov 1939:

. . . a magnificent letter from Sydney Schiff who visited my show on Wednesday. he is sure that I ought to go on painting with all my energy.

25th Dec 1939:

. . . letter from Wadsworth suggesting that I was the chap to do records of the war in painting, that is if I could square this with my pacifist views. He would mention my name in an influential quarter. Personally I am all for it, it not being war propaganda and provided I had a free hand.

8th Jan 1940:

Rationing starts today.

8th Jan 1940:

Making observations of scene of barrage balloons on Southampton Water . . . all to be done from memory owing to restrictions.

15th Jan 1940:

Amazing cold weather . . .  I do a round of some of the neighbours to see that their cisterns are not frozen up

16th Jan 1940:

Portrait of Mother(15x18). Finished on 26^th . Father a bit cool about it, he rather baulked at my putting the knitting in!

8th Feb 1940:

The school grows! Eleven pupils now, but still some away owing to epidemics which are rife.

10th Feb 1940:

Mavis's School

Worked all day removing the school room to the old studio.

28th Mar 1940:

Took Work Suspended, Skating Scene, Southampton Water in Wartime up to London for RA.

1st Apr 1940:

First commission from the Admiralty

Commissioned by the Admiralty for “a couple of pictures for £50 the pair, of fishing boats!”

[Whitby in Wartime (1940) and Robin Hood's Bay in Wartime (1940)]

9th Apr 1940:

Germany invaded Denmark and Norway

9th Apr 1940:

At Whitby looking at fishing boat . . .  one stuck on mud and great effort to free her.

11th Apr 1940:

At Whitby:

Made sketch of lighthouse on cliff. Sheepdog barked without stopping.

11th Apr 1940:

Walked to Robin Hood’s Bay. Bus back.

Rifles being doled out to men who took it somewhat as a joke.

1st May 1940:

Invitation from the British Council to send a painting to Amsterdam – one of 25 invited.

4th May 1940:

A letter from Nan Kivell saying I had just missed being made ARA, Ethel Walker being given priority because of her age.

4th May 1940:

A most eventful day! After having sold nothing for six months. 

Antwerp bought by Chantry Bequest (Tate) for 100 gns December, Work Suspended bought by Hull for 200gns.

14th May 1940:

Black Tuesday. Germans broken through French lines and got to the Channel ports

28th May 1940:

Southampton full of French soldiers from Dunkirk

The amazing achievement of evacuation by sea, 350,000 men, is without doubt one of the most incredible feats in history.

18th Jun 1940:

Dibden Church burnt out. Magazine blown up at Marchwood etc.
I was down all night at the Golfhouse on ARP duty.

22nd Jun 1940:

French having to make Armistice terms of the most shameful kind.

2nd Jul 1940:

National Gallery War Artists preview

Two of mine hung. Eric Ravilious comes out best of the lot . . .
Dickey said the committee were so pleased with the Whitby picture that they were sending me an extra 10 gns!

6th Jul 1940:

[6th July] The WAAC offer 50gns to paint Dunkirk Embarkation, even though Cundall already commissioned to do this subject.

[11th July] To the ministry to see about photos for the Dunkirk Picture. “Hardly any available.”

[17th] Started Evacuation from Dunkirk for MOI.

Finished 14^th August

23rd Jul 1940:

Dug up 42lbs of potatoes to make room for greens.

16th Aug 1940:

Crispin disturbed by gunfire so he and Grock are taken to Bramhall near Manchester (to the Vincents) [Mavis's family] till 30^thSeptember

25th Aug 1940:

Started “large” Dunkirk (40x60) later sold to Canadian War Museum for £260

7th Sep 1940:

Bombing of London started.

23rd Sep 1940:

While having a walk with Mavis on the Forest a German plane was hit over our heads by AA fire which looked very erratic. 2 fine streams of white smoke trailing for miles behind the plane which made off in the B’mth direction. It was too high to see but it got slower and slower, and we heard by the news later, crashed off the Needles

24th Sep 1940:

19 German planes bombing Southampton at lunch time
. . . could see the bombs dropping quite well. AA fire looked quite accurate but no planes brought down.
Our fighters not in evidence till nearly an hour later.

28th Sep 1940:

Redfern Gallery smashed a bit by the bomb which wrecked the top of Burlington Arcade. My Solent Fort was in the window . . . glass and frame smashed up, painting without a scratch!

8th Nov 1940:

[8th] Cycled down to Weymouth to get material for new painting of air battle over Portland. Started at 9.15. Got to Wimborne 12.30, that being 30 miles. But the next 32 miles took ages. Arrived at 5 o’ clock.

[9th] Called on Vice-admiral Drummond at Portland after much difficulty with the police . . . etc.

Cycled back on the 14th

20th Nov 1940:

Eric Gill reported dead after one operation, only 58.

24th Nov 1940:

Epstein’s autobiography comes out.

Levy family [shopkeepers in Southampton] staying a few nights

30th Nov 1940:

We said ‘Hares and Rabbits’ most carefully! Crispin behaved admirably. Southampton closed to the public.

30th Nov 1940:

Southampton closed to the public.

An air-raid started at 6.15pm and went on till 1am. Flares were dropped repeatedly and machine guns and pom poms fired tracers continually at them. Southampton seemed to be blazing. Much heavier bombs were dropped, at times lifting our floors. All the doors and windows rattling continuously. Many more guns in action, one mobile one very close to us. Both gas and electricity were off. Someone went around shouting “All clear” at 1.45am.

2nd Dec 1940:

Nightmare over Southampton. Rank Flour Mills ablaze and Civic Centre  badly knocked about . . . said to be unsafe and will have to be pulled down.

We could hear the roofs crashing in (even here) in Southampton.

Mr Levy went into town to find his shop and home gone . . . 

370 killed and wounded in the 2 raids

3rd Dec 1940:

Painted all day at Battle over Portland (finished on 15^th Jan 1941) ['Attack on a Convoy Seen from the Air" (1941)]

[unknown date]:

You’re above the cloud and you see things down through the cloud on the convoy off the Isle of Wight going up the Channel and being attacked also from the air. This is entirely a picture from imagination that I was asked to do. And when the RAF officials saw it they were so surprised that I had never been up in the air.

[unknown date]:

'HMS Resolution Returning to Portsmouth' (1941)

I did that large painting of the battleship coming into Portsmouth, which was one of the first things I worked on. The officers down at Portsmouth looked at it with a very critical eye. Some of them said ‘ I’m sure there weren’t quite so many brass hats as that on the bridge.’ Another chap said ‘yes there were, they were coming back from the Mediterranean.’ The only fault they could find with it was, one chap said ‘There’s a hatchway missing.’ So that really was very high praise indeed, I think.

1st Jan 1942:

. . . also a small painting (14x24) of the crew of a torpedoed tanker ship’s boat.

1st Jan 1942:

. . . finishing (30x50) the Rescue of Richard Ayres from the sea at the Lizard which took place on the first of March last year. The painting “has caused endless worry and is not satisfactory to me as a painting”.

[unknown date]:

The story behind The Rescue of a sailor on the Lizard

It was February so pretty cold. The boat ran onto some rocks in a cove on the Lizard. Two other men were too weak to swim or hold on.

‘He just managed to get to clinging to a rock. Fortunately some children who were going to school saw him. The farmer’s boy aged about fourteen or fifteen I think, said “All right sir, cling on, I’ll help you.’ He ran all the way back to he farm and carried a rope which must have been almost as heavy as himself along to the cliffs while the little girls were shouting encouragement. And he actually lassoed this man on the rocks there and helped him ashore. I saw the boy later and he said this chap began taking out a wallet with a photograph of his wife, and he was eventually taken to a hospital nearby. And the strange ending of the story is that he found that his wife and small child, may have been two children, were evacuated from Canterbury, which was his home, down there to the Lizard. He was given the British Empire medal.’

2nd Jan 1942:

. . . the distance gives great trouble as it is apt to interfere with the drama in the foreground.

8th Jan 1942:

To London with a couple of pictures on top of the car for Redfern. Went to the War Artist Show at National Gallery.

My large Dunkirk looked frightful, made me feel quite sick. The Convoy from the Air looked none too bad.

10th Jan 1942:

In the evening played at Guess What Tune This Is with Crispin. I was astonished at the number of tunes he knew.

11th Jan 1942:

Russians pushing back German forces around Moscow.

Rommel looks as if he may get back to Tripoli.

14th Jan 1942:

Letter from the Admiralty asking me to take part in a scheme tutoring seamen in their spare time, to paint.

16th Jan 1942:

American fleet . . .  have sunk and damaged Japanese ships

19th Jan 1942:

Letter from the Admiralty to say the trawler and Heinkel picture had been withdrawn from Exhibition as it had a vital secret in it! Would I paint it out? As they would like the painting to go to South Africa.

The painting Trawler Against Heinkel (1941) was eventually passed and sent to Brazil along with several others of his and other war artists as a thank you to Brazil for becoming an ally in the war. However the ship carrying them there was torpedoed and all the works were lost at sea.

23rd Jan 1942:

General Rommel in Libya has started to attack agin. He must be a bit of a lad!

Death of Richard Sickert announced. Certainly a fine painter and a most interesting personality.

24th Jan 1942:

Report in the papers that a cattle ranch is going to be tried out in the Beaulieu district.

27th Jan 1942:

Talked again to Nan Kivell about the possibility of buying a Kit Wood painting. Suggested I should come up again in a month’s time.

27th Jan 1942:

Talk with Nan Kivell

I am so dissatisfied with [my work]. He thinks I am unconsciously trying to emulate certain broad characteristics of other painters and not sticking to the delineation which is my forte. I believe there is a lot in what he says.