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[purgatorio]

Clive Branson, 1907-1944

Blitz: Plane Flying, 1940


Artwork details
Medium Oil on canvas, 610 x 509 x 20 mm

Blitz: Plane Flying is a surreal depiction of a working-class London street during the devastating air raids which lasted from September 1940 until January 1941. Branson was then living in Battersea which was affected by the nightly raids. The air raid shelter positioned in front of one of the houses is an indication of the imminent threat, as is the enormous plane flying low above a recently bombed building, its wings casting a shadow over the street in which people are going about their everyday business. Although the plane displays the Nazi insignia, it also bears the three-colour emblem of the Royal Air Force, indicating emphatically that working class people, both German and British, are the actual victims of war. The propeller cuts vertically through the moon which glows against the acid greens and blues in the winter sky. A woman stands in the foreground holding a pram, her figure out of proportion with the men carting goods and walking along the quiet street of terraced houses. The surrealistic juxtapositions, for example the large cracked egg shell in the foreground and unusual perspectives imbue the painting with a startling visual intensity and a sense of the uncanny.

During the early and late 1930s a number of Branson’s paintings were exhibited by the Artists’ International Association (AIA). Founded in 1933, the initial objective of the AIA was to mobilise ‘the international unity of artists against Imperialist War on the Soviet Union, Fascism and Colonial oppression’ (Morris and Radford, p.2). As the number of members increased (by 1936 over 600 artists had joined the AIA), their aim was broadened to a popular front against both Fascism and war which they strove to achieve through public murals, documentary photographs and travelling exhibitions of paintings and sculptures. In 1936 members of the Surrealist Group were invited to join the AIA. Branson demonstrates an awareness of their precise technique and use of unexpected and disturbing juxtapositions in Blitz: Plane Flying to give an overt critique of the war.


Bombed Women and Searchlights, 1940


Artwork details
Medium Oil on canvas, 509 x 612 x 20 mm

Bombed Women and Searchlights was painted in response to the London Blitz which began in September 1940. Branson was then living in Battersea where he would have witnessed at first hand the devastating air raids. In this painting he employs surrealistic juxtapositions and unusual perspectives to imbue the painting with a startling visual intensity, while at the same time giving an overt critique of the war. The determined face of the woman on the left, (possibly a portrait of the artist’s wife, Noreen Branson, interview with Rosa Branson, 5 November 2004) rescuing some of her possessions from the scene of the recent attack confronts the viewer whose attention is also drawn towards the dramatically foreshortened chair, empty cigarette packet and striped barrier. The sky, filled with barrage balloons to prevent bombing by the Luftwaffe, is lit up by two searchlights which make an aggressive pattern over a factory. The ‘Dig for Victory’ poster on the right hand side, which shows a man working a spade into the earth, refers to a Government campaign which encouraged people to cultivate their gardens and allotments due to the difficulty of importing foodstuffs. The graffiti immediately beneath it with the slogan, ‘Vote Joyce, Say Peace’, alludes to the British Nazi propagandist, William Joyce, who broadcast appeals to the British to surrender. The poster on a shop window which reads ‘Smile and say Victory’, hardly seems reassuring amid the general devastation. The conflicting sentiments draw attention to the tensions in British Society during the war.

The unexpected juxtapositions in Bombed Women and Searchlights indicate Branson’s awareness of Surrealist painters who were represented in an exhibition organised by the Artists International Association (AIA) in 1937 (Morris and Radford, p.41). The AIA was founded in 1933, its initial objective being to mobilise ‘the international unity of artists against Imperialist War on the Soviet Union, Fascism and Colonial oppression’ (Morris and Radford, p.2). As the number of members increased (by 1936 over 600 artists had joined the AIA), their aim was broadened to a popular front against both Fascism and war which they strove to achieve through public murals, documentary photographs and travelling exhibitions of paintings and sculptures. It is not known whether this painting was exhibited, but many of the pictures Branson made while he was living in Battersea were included in an exhibition organised by the Artists’ International Association. In 1941, the year after this painting was made; Branson became a member of the Royal Armoured Corps and was sent overseas to India. He died on active service in Burma in 1944.

[LuseKofte]

Your research and hard work on this made this a very good topic, We should dedicate a section for war memorial´s  and art. This is something we had once a while but never collected in one section. I will try to get the sitemoderators to make such a section. 

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Arnold Daghani
Blitz 1940, 1963


Oil on paper, 31 x 51 cm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/arnold-daghani

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Paul Nash (1889-1946)
was a British surrealist painter and war artist, as well as a photographer, writer and designer of applied art. Nash was among the most important landscape artists of the first half of the twentieth century. He played a key role in the development of Modernism in English art.


Paul Nash at work in 1944 (Getty)


Battle of Britain, 1941




Bomber in the Corn, 1940



This is one of a series of six ‘Raiders’ begun in about August 1940 for the Air Ministry. Nash saw these watercolours as a continuation of his earlier work on the theme of ‘the monster in the field’, which in earlier incarnations consisted of strange misshapen tree trunks. Nash hoped his ‘Raiders’ would be published as war propaganda. This was never done. Nevertheless, the interruption of the machine here implies something a lot more threatening than a Surrealist juxtaposition of unlikely objects.


The Messerschmidt in Windsor Great Park, 1940



In 1940 Nash was made an Official War Artist to the Royal Air Force. He made many studies of planes and wrecked enemy aircraft, although he was not allowed to fly in a plane himself because of health problems. His drawings and paintings of the period are vivid re-interpretations of the scenes he witnessed. He was particularly interested in the bizarre relationships between man-made and natural forms, and making static objects appear animated. Here the crashed German plane takes on a totem-like presence, accentuated by the strange shadows.


Totes Meer (Dead Sea), 1940-1



This painting, the title of which is German for ‘dead sea’, was inspired by a dump of wrecked aircraft at Cowley in Oxfordshire. Nash based the image on photographs he took there, a few of which are on display nearby.The artist described the sight: ‘The thing looked to me suddenly, like a great inundating sea ... the breakers rearing up and crashing on the plain. And then, no: nothing moves, it is not water or even ice, it is something static and dead.’

VIDEO - Story of a Masterpiece: Paul Nash: Totes Meer


German planes, brought down over Great Britain, were dumped, photographed on August 27, 1940


AP Photo http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/07/world-war-ii-the-battle-of-britain/100102/#img24

A huge scrap heap where German planes, brought down over Great Britain, were dumped, photographed on August 27, 1940. The large number of Nazi planes downed during raids on Britain made a substantial contribution to the national scrap metal salvage campaign. (AP Photo)

Tate Archive: Negatives of 1267 photographs taken by Paul Nash 1930–46
Paul Nash's Work - Imperial War Museum
Paintings by Paul Nash at the Art UK site

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Edward Burra
Blue Baby, Blitz Over Britain, 1941


Watercolour, gouache on paper, 675 x 1005 mm
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/3918

A monstrous blue bird-like figure hovers over a desolate landscape. Clouds of smoke rise from rocky shapes on the ground. A group of figures cower in terror among the ruins of their homes.

Burra was living in Rye when the Luftwaffe attempted to destroy radar stations along the south coast of England during the winter of 1940- 41. Rye was part of the radar chain and he described the impact of the bombing both with despair and with a certain relish as patterns of ordered urban life were radically changed.

Edward Burra was one of the major British painters of the Twentieth Century. Surreal images of menace had appeared in his paintings during the Thirties when Europe became the theatre for fascist-communist confrontations. In 'Blue Baby' the menace is personified into a monstrous harpy dispensing punishment and retribution. There is a disturbing visual disjuncture between this almost cartoon-like character (in form, as well as name) and the defenceless, terrified population, reduced to a primitive existence amongst the rubble. Elements of the Baby appear to be formed from aircraft parts and the image throws up a dark vision of the inevitable overpowering of society by technology.

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Roy Anthony Nockolds
Stalking the Night Raider, 1941


oil on canvas, 635 x 762 mm
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/20392

A Defiant aircraft flying at night above a moonlit coastline. The beams of two searchlights cross just beneath the plane.

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C R W Nevinson
Anti-aircraft Defences, 1940


oil on canvas, 812 x 609 mm
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/20254

View of an anti-aircraft battery set in countryside with searchlight beams crossing the sky and attendant soldiers.

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Leonard Henry Rosoman

A House Collapsing on Two Firemen, Shoe Lane, London, EC4, 1940


oil on canvas, 918 x 768 mm

A collapsing wall is on the point of burying two firemen. Debris, fire and smoke fill the air.

The horrific scene in Shoe Lane in the City of London was one that Rosoman witnessed as a fellow fireman. The falling wall trails chaos and disorder in its wake, its own rigid structure about to break and kill the firemen still clutching their hoses. Rosoman later expressed dissatisfaction with the painting as an over literal response but the effect on the viewer is still powerful and intensely disconcerting. The painting was exhibited in the Firemen Artists exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1941. With the outbreak of the Second World War imminent, Leonard Rosoman had joined the auxiliary fire service and continued to serve until April 1945 when he was appointed as an official war artist with the British Pacific fleet. Both the navy and the landscape of blitzed London provided a natural subject for his neo-romantic work where machines are poised to destroy and buildings are animated by destruction.


The Houses of Parliament on Fire, May 1941


oil on canvas, 975 x 1230 mm

A view of the Houses of Parliament on fire seen from across the Thames.

http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/search?filter%5BmakerString%5D%5B0%5D=%22Rosoman%2C%20Leonard%20Henry%20%28RA%29%22&query=

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Vaughan, John Keith
Echo of the Bombardment, 1942


Watercolour, crayon, ink on paper, 318 x 464 mm
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/36932

A surreal moonlit scene featuring a large primeval coiled form in the foreground right. In the background stand the bombed-out shells of two buildings. From the window cavities of each emerge conical forms also reminiscent of prehistoric lifeforms.

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Illustrierte Zeitung, Leipzig, weekly issue for 3 October 1940



via http://longstreet.typepad.com/books/2011/01/part-.html

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Alexander Macpherson
War Weapons Week, Paisley : December 1940


Watercolour, 384 x 562 mm
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/17269

A view looking down on Barshaw Park hung with buntings. Crowds of civilians are gathered to look at a display of artillery, tanks and a captured German Messerschmitt 109 fighter aircraft.

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Royal Air Force official photographer
German Dornier Do 17 bombers over London, 7 September 1940


http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194295


German Air Force photographer
Heinkel He 111 over London, 7 September 1940


http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205022027

A Heinkel He 111 bomber flying over the East End of London at the start of the Luftwaffe's evening raids of 7 September 1940.


Camera-gun Stills from No. 609 Squadron RAF, 1940


http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205212577

A still from camera-gun film taken from a Supermarine Spitfire Mark I of No. 609 Squadron RAF, flown by by Pilot Officer J D Bisdee, as he dived on a formation of Heinkel He IIIs of KG 55 which had just bombed the Supermarine aircraft works at Woolston, Southampton. Tracer bullets can be seen heading towards the formation as Bisdee opens fire.



http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205023627

A still from camera-gun film taken from a Supermarine Spitfire Mark I of No. 609 Squadron RAF, flown by by Flying Officer T Nowierski as he closed in on a formation of Dornier Do 17Zs of KG3 south-west of London at approximately 5.45 pm on 7 September 1940. Tracer bullets from the intercepting Spitfires can be seen travelling towards the enemy aircraft which were heading back to their base after bombing East London and the docks.


Mr Puttnam, War Office official photographer
Pattern of condensation, 1940


http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194290

Operations: Pattern of condensation trails left by British and German aircraft after a dog fight.


Royal Air Force official photographer
Crashed Heinkel He IIIP, 14 August 1940


http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205210001

A crashed Heinkel He IIIP, 1G+NT, of III/KG27, shot down by Blue Section of No. 92 Squadron RAF at 6 pm on 14 August 1940, lying by the side of the road at Charterhouse, Somerset. Note the machine gun projecting from the starboard side of the fuselage as protection from beam attacks.