What do you think?
Rate this book
The Air War in Paintings
192 pages, Hardcover
Published August 22, 2024
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 23, 2025
A very enjoyable book, one I thoroughly recommend.
A career working in the Imperial War Museum, with achievements such as guiding the establishment of the Holocaust Exhibition, serves Suzanne Bardgett well in this project. She selects about 100 paintings by painters based in Britain and organises them chronologically from 1940 to 1946, and ends with a biographical summary of each contributor.
By focusing on the organisation that commissioned and paid the artists - the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), she provides an account that serves as a metaphor for the war itself. The committee is all-powerful and is subject to the whims of powerful men and their preconceptions and prejudices (not for the first time, the reader is reminded of the nasty views of Kenneth Cark), and the individual artists are often victims. While she writes that many were prevented from witnessing enemy gunfire, they were exposed to the wilful exertion of the unaccountable power of the WAAC, which causes the reader to conclude that this was a contributory factor to the premature death of more than one.
Many of the paintings are memorable. Eric Ravilious' work is as wonderful as his peacetime depictions of the South Downs and the work of both Nashes are rightly acclaimed. However for me it was the understated watercolours of Leslie Cole, drawings of Raymond McGrath and gouache of John Armstrong that made the strongest impression.
Recommended.
A career working in the Imperial War Museum, with achievements such as guiding the establishment of the Holocaust Exhibition, serves Suzanne Bardgett well in this project. She selects about 100 paintings by painters based in Britain and organises them chronologically from 1940 to 1946, and ends with a biographical summary of each contributor.
By focusing on the organisation that commissioned and paid the artists - the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), she provides an account that serves as a metaphor for the war itself. The committee is all-powerful and is subject to the whims of powerful men and their preconceptions and prejudices (not for the first time, the reader is reminded of the nasty views of Kenneth Cark), and the individual artists are often victims. While she writes that many were prevented from witnessing enemy gunfire, they were exposed to the wilful exertion of the unaccountable power of the WAAC, which causes the reader to conclude that this was a contributory factor to the premature death of more than one.
Many of the paintings are memorable. Eric Ravilious' work is as wonderful as his peacetime depictions of the South Downs and the work of both Nashes are rightly acclaimed. However for me it was the understated watercolours of Leslie Cole, drawings of Raymond McGrath and gouache of John Armstrong that made the strongest impression.
Recommended.
Displaying 1 of 1 review