Evelyn Dunbar: War and Country Book

Evelyn Dunbar holds a unique position in twentieth-century British art. Described by William Rothenstein, when principal of the Royal College of Art, as one of the most promising of the younger painters, with real genius , she specialised in mural painting at the RCA and carried out decorations at Brockley School, Lewisham from 1933-36 under Charles Mahoney s direction. It was at Brockley that her work first gained public notice and wide acclaim. Dunbar s most successful and extensive body of work dates from the Second World War when she was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee, and so became the only woman, on a salaried basis, to record women s activities on the Home Front. It was for her lyrical but unsentimental paintings of the Women s Land Army that she is especially known.These provide an important documentary record of women s work and contribution to the war effort. Like many other war artists she tended to fall out of sight of the mainstream, modernist art world followi