Colours of war

The concept of 'war artist' as relating to painters rather than commercial illustrators is virtually unique to Britain. The work they did during the Second World, under the auspices of the War Artists Advisory Committee, and the circumstances in which they produced it, is the subject of Alan Ross's discerning and sympathetic study--the first of its kind. Drawing largely on the Imperial War Museum's archives and quoting at length from artists' letters from the different fronts, Alan Ross provides a context for discussion of the work itself. He relates war paintings of individual artists to their art in general, analyses their attitudes to war and to the subject of war art, and describes their problems. Among Home Front artists, some of them veterans of the 1914-1918 war, were Nevinson, Spencer, Bomberg, Robers, Moore, Sutherland and Piper. They painted such subjects as the Blitz, munition-workers, anti-aircraft defences, miners and shipbuilders.^ Outstanding were the large-scale works dealing with aerial warfare of England by Paul Nash, a survivor of the Western Front. Three exceptionally talented war artists were killed; Eric Ravilious, whose subjects ranged from northern convoys a