Victorine Anne Foot (1 May 1920 – 2000) was a British artist who worked in oils, watercolours and pastels. Foot is best known for her work during World War II on

military camouflage Military camouflage is the use of camouflage by an armed force to protect personnel and equipment from observation by enemy forces. In practice, this means applying colour and materials to military equipment of all kinds, including vehicles, ...

and for her post-war career as an artist and teacher in Scotland.

Early life

Foot was born in Knowles Bank near

Pembury Pembury is a large village in Kent, in the south east of England, with a population of 6,128 at the 2011 Census. It lies just to the north-east of Royal Tunbridge Wells. The village centre, including the village green and High Street area is a ...

in Kent and studied at the

Central School of Art The Central School of Art and Design was a public school of fine and applied arts in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1896 by the London County Council as the Central School of Arts and Cr ...

in London between 1938 and 1941.

World War Two

After the war began, the Central School of Art was evacuated to Northampton in 1941 and Foot gave up her studies to take a job as a Junior Technical Assistant in the Naval Section of the Directorate of Camouflage based in Leamington Spa. Her duties included painting

camouflage Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see, or by disguising them as something else. Examples include the leopard's spotted coat, the b ...

designs onto models of ships. The models were all based on real ships; if the real ship was sunk or lost the model was retired from further use. Whilst at the Camouflage Directorate, Foot drew and painted her colleagues at work, both at Leamington Spa and at the docks where they painted their camouflage schemes onto ships. She submitted some of this work to the

War Artists' Advisory Committee The War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), was a British government agency established within the Ministry of Information at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and headed by Sir Kenneth Clark. Its aim was to compile a comprehensive artist ...

and had one painting, ''Camouflaging a Cruiser in Dock'', purchased by the Committee in June 1943.

Post-war career

When the war ended, Foot returned to her art studies. She studied at the

Chelsea School of Art Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London based in London, United Kingdom, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation. It offers further and higher educat ...

for a short time before she moved to Edinburgh where she married

Eric Schilsky Eric Schilsky, RA (born Eric Clare Telford Schilsky; October 1898 in Southampton, Hampshire, England; died 29 March 1974, Edinburgh) was a sculptor. Schooled in Geneva, and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he studied sculpture under Hava ...

, an artist whom she had first met at the Camouflage Unit. Schilsky was head of the School of Sculpture at

Edinburgh College of Art Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) is one of eleven schools in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Tracing its history back to 1760, it provides higher education in art and design, architecture, histor ...

and Foot enrolled there, gaining her Diploma in 1949. In 1949 Foot had her first solo exhibition at the Institute Francais in Edinburgh. She went on to exhibit with the

New English Art Club The New English Art Club (NEAC) was founded in London in 1885 as an alternative venue to the Royal Academy. It continues to hold an annual exhibition of paintings and drawings at the Mall Galleries in London, exhibiting works by both members and a ...

, the

London Group The London Group is a society based in London, England, created to offer additional exhibiting opportunities to artists besides the Royal Academy of Arts. Formed in 1913, it is one of the oldest artist-led organisations in the world. It was form ...

, at the Royal Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy. The critic Jack Beddington included Foot as one of the subjects in his 1957 book ''Young Artists of Promise''. Foot also taught for periods of time, at the Edinburgh College of Art in 1950 and 1951, and at Oxenfoord Castle School, in Midlothian, throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In 1994 Foot donated her sketches from Leamington Spa to the Imperial War Museum. Works by Foot are also held by

Aberdeen Art Gallery Aberdeen Art Gallery is the main visual arts exhibition space in the city of Aberdeen, Scotland. It was founded in 1884 in a building designed by Alexander Marshall Mackenzie, with a sculpture court added in 1905. In 1900, it received the art ...

and the

Scottish Arts Council The Scottish Arts Council ( gd, Comhairle Ealain na h-Alba, sco, Scots Airts Cooncil) was a Scottish public body responsible for the funding, development and promotion of the arts in Scotland. The Council primarily distributed funding from the ...

References

External links

*
Works by Victorine Foot
in the Imperial War Museum collection. {{DEFAULTSORT:Foot, Victorine 1920 births 2000 deaths 20th-century English painters 20th-century English women artists Alumni of the Central School of Art and Design Alumni of the Edinburgh College of Art Artists from Kent British war artists Camoufleurs English women painters People from Pembury World War II artists