Standing by on Train 21 (1942)

 Standing by on Train 21 (1942)

Standing by on Train 21 (1942) oil on canvas, 22 x 30 in. (55.8 x 76.2 cm.) Imperial War Museum, London

 

 

At the monthly meetings of the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC) in 1939-40 discussion about the role of women artists appears to have been lively. Chaired by Sir Kenneth Clark (later to become Lord Clark, celebrated for his TV series Civilisation), the WAAC consisted of some ten leading figures in the world of British art, all men, with an average age of 51. They were open to suggestion: in February 1940 Lady Florence Norman, a founder trustee of the Imperial War Museum, wrote to Ted Dickey, the WAAC secretary:

 

The Imperial War Museum [...] has once more the duty of recording a War. We have no funds for the purpose of paying artists. But much can be done by introducing artists to subjects and providing facilities for this work. [...] The calling up of a million women to substitute the work of men, points to the need of appealing to the patriotic sense of women [...] to serve and make sacrifices for this country. The Women's Services, at my suggestion, have each appointed a historian to collect records and I am asking that artists within their ranks should draw and paint what they see.

 

Dickey subsequently asked the Women's Voluntary Service (WVS) to submit areas of activity which might be depicted if women war artists were to be appointed. Some results appear to have been submitted very closely to the time, mid-April 1940, of Evelyn's appointment as a war artist. The suggestions included images of women working on allotments and women supplying fresh vegetables to minesweeper crews. In her application the previous December Evelyn had stated her readiness to record 'women's agricultural or horticultural work, or anything connected with land work' with 'very keen understanding'.

 

One senses a certain ferment in Evelyn's activity, set against the national background: the  Conservative government led by Neville Chamberlain was tottering to its fall, to be replaced by Winston Churchill; the now almost-forgotten war in Norway was going badly; Nazi incursions into the Low Countries and northern France were gathering speed, with conquered French airfields facilitating bombing raids into England, particularly London. Less than a week after her appointment on April 17th Evelyn was contracted to produce six WVS paintings, starting with Civil Defence operations (then under the WVS wing) at Bisham Abbey in Berkshire. There was some delay while Dickey arranged and forwarded travel warrants and vouchers for artists' materials. Evelyn had been in the middle of what she called her 'crisis years', following the break-up of her relationship with her former Royal College of Art mural tutor Charles Mahoney and subsequent miscarriage. She had very little work, there was some family bitterness, and she had no money. For the previous twelve months she had worked behind the counter in her sisters' haberdashery shop at 168, High Street, Rochester, setting her employment against the family household expenses and for the rent of a studio above the shop. In a hurry to justify her appointment, she managed to submit Putting on Anti-Gas Protective Clothing to the WAAC by mid-June. It was accepted with acclaim. In early May another posting, overriding her original WVS contract, came from Dickey. In consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture and ever mindful of Evelyn's request for agricultural or horticultural work, he arranged, after some hurried re-arrangement of her placement, for her to report for duty to Sparsholt Farm Institute, near Winchester.

 

Nevertheless Evelyn proposed to fulfil, even exceed, her original WVS contract. In the hiatus between the completion of the sketchwork for Putting on Anti-Gas Protective Clothing and her new Sparsholt contract, produced - on her own initiative - paintings of two further women's organisation activities. The first of these, A Knitting Party, was a part-actual, part-imagined WVS knitting session in her own home, The Cedars in Strood, Kent, with her mother Florence in a central placement. The second, A Canning Demonstration, took Evelyn a short bicycle ride up the Gravesend road to the village of Shorne, where the Women's Institute was hosting a demonstration of soft fruit preservation in the village hall. Another possible site for her brush lay a mile or two along the Brompton Farm road towards the village of Wainscott. Here something happened that served to alter the course of her WAAC employment.

 

Had she been here before? We don't know, even though this pencil sketch of an extensive set of allotments is signed 'Evelyn Dunbar' and dated '39' in the lower right hand corner. 

  

'Allotments near Strood' pen and ink, pencil. 1939 (?) Signed 'Evelyn Dunbar' Photograph©Liss Llewellyn

 

 

In the summer of 1941 Evelyn applied to Dickey for a permit known as a Green Identity Card, which would authorise her to access low security level premises. Her need for a Green Identity Card was made clear by an unfortunate incident the year before, during the height of the invasion scare following the military disaster of Dunkirk and the beginning of the struggle for control of the skies, the Battle of Britain. She had been along the road towards Wainscott, where the allotments covered a portion of hillside which had wide views over the river Medway and beyond, an ideal place in her opinion for another in her initial series of WVS scenes. 

 

She stopped at a suitable point, set up her easel and began to sketch, being careful to include a woman in the foreground. (Perhaps we can note that in such studies figures which would be moving about all the time would be added in later.) The sketch was reasonably advanced, with colours and textures noted when, maybe more to her surprised amusement than to her annoyance, she was approached by a group of allotment gardeners who told her sharply to take herself off; they wanted no truck with German spies, making drawings helpful to the enemy. This may not have been quite as fatuous as it sounds: from these allotments there was a view of the Royal Navy dockyard across the river at Chatham. If there were threats of summary justice or of calling the police, they have not been recorded. Evelyn retreated. It may be a conjecture too far to suggest that on returning home she signed her work - something she only did with finished work, and that not invariably - but dated it the previous year. She wrote to Dickey:

 

I wondered if they would give me a permit for working in places where I might otherwise be barred? If so, I should be very glad to have a permit of some kind, as, although the subject I am studying at present is nothing more secret than allotments in an area like this one I can hardly move without running into some kind of defence measure and as I have no official permit it is not always too comfortable.

Evelyn was eventually granted her Green Identity Card, but her plans for using it were eclipsed by a request, relayed by Dickey, from Edwina, Countess Mountbatten for some nursing pictures. Lady Mountbatten was a prominent figure in both the Red Cross and the St John Ambulance Brigade. Dickey's letter stated that the WAAC 'recommended that you be asked to paint some pictures of nursing subjects for a fee of thirty five guineas [...] It was particularly requested that a hospital train should be included among the subjects that you should deal with. Train No.21 was suggested as particularly interesting.' In due course Evelyn waved her Green Identity Card at the entrance to Goodmayes Station, near Ilford, in Essex, and work could start.

 

So we arrive (at last) at the subject of this essay. Here is a reminder of it.

 

 

 

Train 21 was a fully equipped hospital train, standing full-time in the extensive sidings (later built over) by Goodmayes Station, ready to move into Liverpool Street Station, in the City of London, to take on bomb casualties, evacuate them from the danger areas and distribute them to hospitals where there was less risk of bombing. Evelyn's painting shows the staff recreation area, adapted it seems from a First Class passenger carriage. The woman in the central foreground is the doctor in overall charge of the train. Beside and behind her are nurses from various nursing organisations: the blue-cloaked nurse on the right belongs to the Civil Nursing Reserve, and the woman on the left is a member of one of the religious nursing orders. Most of the others belong to the Red Cross. A lot of knitting is going on, comforters and balaclavas: Evelyn is painting in October, and winter will be coming on. In the far distance a nurse is hanging up washing. There are several male orderlies, apparently in RAF uniform, perhaps seconded from military hospitals. A WVS member, standing in the middle of the corridor, may be asking the nurse looking up at her if she takes milk in her tea. There is an air of calm, of order and assurance. No one is talking much. The hospital train is ready to move into action.

 

For all this, such hospital trains were rarely used. As the intensity of the blitz diminished they were put to other uses or broken up. By 1944 some had been adapted as military hospital trains for bringing the wounded back from theatres of war in France and Italy.

 

Warmest thanks to Paul Liss for his contribution,

 

 

Text ©Christopher Campbell-Howes 2026