Some of the finest work of modern British art was produced during the second world war. Many women were amongst the artists officially commissioned to record the Blitz and travel through Europe to record its devastation first-hand. One, Doris Zinkeisen, was the first civilian to arrive at Belsen after its liberation by the Allies. They also painted land girls back home, the women in factories, in the ATS + the Red Cross, all stepping into the breach to keep the country going. I will introduce you to some new names based on my interviews with several of the self-effacing but very talented people who found their paintings shown at the National Gallery, while all its other masterpieces were hidden away in the slate mines of Snowdonia. While Myra Hess’s morale boosting concerts took place there throughout the war, the Recording Britain and War Artists Advisory Committee schemes meant that artists were guaranteed employment, and our national collections would inherit work of great historical and propaganda interest, much of which is not often on display.
Biography of Magdalen Evans
Magdalen studied history of art at UEA and worked in London galleries for fifteen years; since then, she has been organising exhibitions, researching paintings and writing articles, particularly on C19th/20th women artists. A contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and to BBC Woman's Hour, she also works with charities that help ex-offenders through art and education. Her book, 'Utmost Fidelity' is on Marianne Stokes and her English landscape painter husband Adrian Stokes RA. Magdalen has also lectured recently for the Art Fund, National Portrait Gallery, Pre-Raphaelite Society and Art Workers' Guild as well as to the Art Society of Budapest. She is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Arts Scholars and has lectured for them at the Old Bailey in 2024 on the subject of Elizabeth Fry and her contribution over the past 200 years to prison reform through creativity since the passing of the 1823 Gaol's Act.
Photo of Laura Knight’s ‘A Balloon Site, Coventry’, HMSO Public domain