Tag: War Artist

Roland Vivian Pitchforth: War Art

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 22nd February 2018

Roland Vivian Pitchforth was 44 when war was declared. He was one of the few artists to get the job done. He painted every type of scene you could think of and accurately.

The spotlight after the war fell on more abstract artists. I blame gallery curators who want to make an easy (lazy?) link between the wars; the abstract paintings of Paul Nash of the First World War next to the paintings of Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore’s Second. In this funk I think Roland Vivian Pitchforth lost out, as did Eric Ravilious until his work was reviewed again in the 1970s. I think it is time these works are championed.

After almost a year of bureaucratic wrangling with the start up of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, Pitchforth was made an official war artist.

Kenneth Clark was chairman of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee. That committee was part of the Ministry of Information. Clark would describe the ministry and its role succinctly, if rather negatively, in his autobiography:

It was said to contain 999 employees… [Its] large staff had been recruited to deal with three or four different objects. The first, and most defensible, was censorship; the second the provision of news; the third a feeble attempt at propaganda through various media; and the fourth to provide a kind of wastepaper-basket into which everyone could throw their grievances and their war-winning proposals.

The official role of war art had been, after much difficulty, established during the First World War. (In part, the idea had succeeded because the Germans had already developed such a scheme of their own, and the English felt a need to rival their enemy.) The essential purpose was that artists should provide a record of the war; and in some instances, (though it was not required, or expected) they might create something beyond reportage or official portraits – works of art in their own right. †

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Post Office Buildings, 1941

From 1940 to 1945, Pitchforth served as an official war artist for the Ministries of Information, Home Security, Supply and for the Admiralty. In March 1940, he was given a brief to depict the work of the Air Raid
Precaution (ARP) organisation and in December secured a six month
appointment with the Ministries of Home Security and Supply.

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Repairing Telephone Cables, 1941

In a series of pencil, watercolour, oil and lithograph pieces, he depicted ARP training, war damage, military production and naval scenes. Many of these were singled out for praise by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (WAAC) and exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1941. He also painted a series of London war damage scenes including a number of paintings of the House of Commons in 1941

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Repairing Telephone Cables, 1941

His artist’s eye picked out the many bleak and surreal sights on London’s bomb sites. In March 1941, he described sketching damaged lift shafts open to the elements: “They look like dead prehistoric animals lying
over the jagged walls.”

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – The City Temple Church, London, EC4, 1941

Pitchforth subsequently specialised in coastal scenes, joined several naval convoys to Gibraltar and the Azores and produced paintings on RAF test flights and maintenance subjects.

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Loading Stores for Italy at Algiers, 1944

Commissioned in October 1943 as a temporary captain in the Royal Marines, Pitchforth was attached to the Royal Navy and in 1945 was sent by South Eastern Command to record the naval campaigns to retake Burma and Ceylon. During the British assault on Rangoon, he assisted in the camouflaging of his group’s amphibious craft. He captured the events in a series of paintings of Colombo Harbour and in The First British troops in Rangoon (1945). At war’s end, Pitchforth acquired a lung infection and spent 1945-1946 convalescing in South Africa (he still managed to exhibit at Wildenstein’s Gallery) before returning to London in 1948.

It is not surprising that you can still find the locations of Pitchforth’s paintings in London, but due to bombing and redevelopment some of the shops have changed shape.

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Sunday Morning, Great Titchfield Street, London, 1941

The Street Today, Google Maps.

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Chamber of the House of Commons, Bomb Damage, 1940–1945

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – AFS Practice with a Trailer-pump : On the banks of the Serpentine, London, 1941

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Fire-hose Practice in St James’s Park, London, 1941

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Protection Pits for Dispersed Aircraft, Lee-on-Solent, 1941

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – A New Runway, Lee-on-Solent, 1941

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – A Swordfish Aircraft Getting Ready to Take Off, 1941

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – A Royal Observer Corps Post, Rottingdean, 1944

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – An AA Battery, 1943

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – WAAFs Packing Parachutes, 1940

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Raw Materials for 4.5 Anti-aircraft Shells, 1941

Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Night Transport, 1940

† Peter Stansky & William Abrahams – London’s Burning – Life, Death & Art in the Second World War. 1994. p16

Tags Roland Vivian Pitchforth, War Artist, WW2

Roof Over Britain

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 3rd January 2017

On my bookcases I have a rotation of new and old books that I face out, depending on the designer. Some John Minton or Edward Bawden dust jackets, or pamphlets. But the book I normally put out, for the absolute beauty of the illustration is Roof Over Britain. It is illustrated by Abram Games and for the beauty of it, it is normally to be found for under five pounds. I have contemplated getting another to frame on the wall.

The topic is of the Anti-aircraft defences during the Second World War. It is an odd thing how patriotic the art of WW2 makes one feel. The lines of the soldiers face are almost like a German statue, it is all very modern.

The Front Cover of ‘Roof Over Britain’, 1943.

Born in 1914 to Latvian and Russo-Polish parents in Whitechapel, East London, Abram Games joined the Army in 1939 and was quickly designated the role of draughtsman. By 1942 he had been promoted to captain and was the only Official War Poster Artist for the rest of the Second World War.

Abram Games in his studio, 1941

After the war his freelance career went from strength to strength with commissions for the Festival of Britain, the United Nations, Shell, Guinness and the BBC. After a career spanning over 60 years, Games died in 1996 leaving a legacy of daring, distinctive and elegant images.

Justly famous for his innovative and bold poster commissions, Games claimed that the perfect design employed ‘maximum meaning, minimum means’. As a design student they are words I loved, communication first as part of design.

The Back Cover

Abram Games – Salute the Soldier – National Army Museum, 1944

The model for the booklet looks to have been one Games used many times judging by the similarity of the ‘Salute the Soldier’ poster.

In 2014 Games’s image was used on a stamp for the Remarkable Lives series for Royal Mail.

Abram Games, 1st Class Stamp, Remarkable Lives Set, 2014.

Tags 20th Centure Design, Abram Games, Designer, Poster Design, Roof Over Britain, War Art, War Artist, WW2

Ardizzone in the Housewife

Post author By Robjn Cantus
Post date 18th August 2016

I find I can spot the illustration work of Edward Ardizzone across a room if I am in a bookshop, it is so iconic in style. He is most famous these days for the illustrations to Puffin children’s books like ‘Stig of the Dump’ by Clive King and BB’s ‘The Little Grey Men’ as they have been reprinted now for over forty years with his illustrations; but it’s nice to see his ‘Tim’ series of books have also been reprinted and revived again.

This post is really about his illustrations found inside ‘The Housewife Magazine’. I can find very little information on the history of the magazine itself, but the issues I own run from 1950 to 1970. As you can see from below, some of the illustrations are full colour and one of them is half colour and black and white. Without having looked in every magazine, so far I have found five stories illustrated by Ardizzone, but each edition had a prominent illustrator inside, sometimes Ronald Searle, sometimes Barnett Freedman.

Strawberries and Cream illustrated in full storyboard style by Edward Ardizzone.

Born Edward Jeffrey Irving Ardizzone, he was born in Tonkin on 16 October 1900 and died in Rodmersham Green in Kent, England on 8 November 1979. His father was a naturalised Frenchman of Italian descent, who was born in Algeria. His mother, Margaret, was English.

In 1905, Margaret Ardizzone returned to England with her three eldest children. They were brought up in Ipswich, Suffolk, largely by their maternal grandmother, whilst Margaret returned to join her husband in the Far East.

Ardizzone left school in 1918 and twice tried to enlist in the British Army but was refused. After spending six months at a commerce college in Bath, Ardizzone spent several years working as an office clerk in both Warminster and London, where he began taking evening classes at the Westminster School of Art, which were taught by Bernard Meninsky. In 1922 Ardizzone became a naturalised British citizen.

Ardizzone’s first major commission was to illustrate an edition of ‘In a Glass Darkly’ by Sheridan Le Fanuin 1929. He also produced advertising material for Johnnie Walker whisky and illustrations for both Punch and The Radio Times.

He became a war artist. With an Italian name he was often found drawing British installations and getting arrested as troops struggled to understand his role as a ‘war artist’ and suspected him of being an Italian spy.

Post war his credits of illustrations are so numerous they have become listed as part of a 300 page book of Illustrative works by Brian Alderson ‘A Bibliographic Commentary Hardcover’, a book listing hundreds of books and magazine covers.

Here is a colour and black and white printing. Magazines where still on a budget after the war and colour printing was reserved as a decorative feature to be dispersed over the magazine. Here is an unusual view of this. In Ardizzone’s ‘Tim’ books it is common for one page to be colour and the other in black and white.

Below are the black and white printed line drawings by Ardizzone. One of the loveliest features is the illustrations incorporate the text and flow around it.