The War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC), was a British

government agency A government agency or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government (bureaucracy) that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, s ...

established within the Ministry of Information at the outbreak of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

in 1939 and headed by

Sir Kenneth Clark Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director and broadcaster. His expertise covered a wide range of artists and periods, but he is particularly associated with Italian Renaissa ...

. Its aim was to compile a comprehensive artistic record of Britain throughout the war. This was achieved both by appointing official war artists, on full-time or temporary contracts and by acquiring artworks from other artists. When the committee was dissolved in December 1945 its collection consisted of 5,570 works of art produced by over four hundred artists. This collection was then distributed to museums and institutions in Britain and around the world, with over half of the collection, some 3,000 works, going to the

Imperial War Museum The Imperial War Museum (IWM), currently branded "Imperial War Museums", is a British national museum. It is headquartered in London, with five branches in England. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, it was intended to record the civ ...

Aims and objectives

The stated aim of the WAAC, and the War Artists Advisory Scheme, which it ran, was: Clark, then director of the National Gallery, was the driving force behind the establishment of the committee. The advent of World War II saw many artists cease working and lose their incomes as commercial galleries closed, private commissions ceased and the art schools reduced their teaching or closed altogether. This led Clark to fear artists' unemployment, and he sought to keep artists engaged with wartime commissions, aiming for a contemporary artistic record of the war. Clark also led the Pilgrim Trust's Recording Britain watercolour scheme which was devised as a pictorial

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of British life before an anticipated German invasion. Clark later admitted that he hoped to prevent artists from being killed on active service. Clark's lobbying for Government support for artists at the outset of the war directly led to the formation of the WAAC. The primary purpose of the committee was officially propaganda and keeping up public morale with art exhibitions, which were staged at the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...

. Showing British war art in North America during 1941 was aimed at persuading the United States to lend economic and military support to Britain at a time of American neutrality.

Membership

The WAAC met at the

once a month, with members drawn from government departments, the forces and London art schools. The original members of the committee were :::*

, Chair of WAAC :::* E.M.O'R. Dickey, Committee Secretary until 1942 then a Committee member :::* E.C. Gregory, Committee Secretary from 1942 :::* Muirhead Bone, artist member and trustee of the

:::* Percy Jowett, artist member and Principal of the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...

:::* Walter Russell, artist member and Keeper of the

Royal Academy Schools The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

:::* Colin Coote,

War Office The War Office has referred to several British government organisations throughout history, all relating to the army. It was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, at ...

representative :::* R.M.Y. Gleadowe, Admiralty representative :::* W.P. Hildred,

Air Ministry The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force and civil aviation that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the ...

representative, until 1940 :::* T.B. Braund,

Ministry of Home Security The Ministry of Home Security was a British government department established in 1939 to direct national civil defence, primarily tasked with organising air raid precautions, during the Second World War. The Ministry for Home Security was heade ...

representative, until 1940 :::* Randolph Schwabe, member from 1941 and

Slade Professor of Fine Art The Slade Professorship of Fine Art is the oldest professorship of art and art history at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and University College, London. History The chairs were founded concurrently in 1869 by a bequest from the art collect ...

UCL Later in the war representatives from the ministries of

Supply Supply or supplies may refer to: *The amount of a resource that is available **Supply (economics), the amount of a product which is available to customers **Materiel, the goods and equipment for a military unit to fulfill its mission *Supply, as ...

, Production and War Transport joined the committee. Although some of the original members were moved to other duties as the war developed, Clark, Bone, Dickey and Russell remained active members throughout the conflict.

Operations

The committee operated by employing artists on full-time contracts, offering short-term commissions to artists on individual subjects and by purchasing finished works offered to it. In total WAAC acquired artworks from some four hundred artists. It also issued permits allowing artists access to otherwise restricted areas and rationed materials. Wartime rationing restricted good quality paper for printmaking and materials for sculpture so such works were under-represented in the WAAC collection. In June 1941, WAAC established a scheme to obtain artworks by artists from Britain's overseas colonies. Although four artists were sent to record the activities of the British Expeditionary Force in France, at the start of the war the majority of WAAC commissions were for subjects on the British home front, but as the conflict progressed twenty-six men were given overseas commissions. Among these were Edward Ardizzone, Henry Carr, and

Edward Bawden Edward Bawden, (10 March 1903 – 21 November 1989) was an English painter, illustrator and graphic artist, known for his prints, book covers, posters, and garden metalwork furniture. Bawden taught at the Royal College of Art, where he had be ...

who each went to the Middle East, Leslie Cole was sent to Malta, France and South-East Asia, Vivian Pitchforth went to Burma, and Anthony Gross went to the Middle East and Burma before joining the Normandy landings. Two women, Mary Kessell and Laura Knight, were also, towards the end of the war, given overseas commissions. Other artists serving overseas but working without a WAAC commission or contract, submitted work which was then purchased by the committee. These included Doris Zinkeisen and Stella Schmolle serving with the

Red Cross The organized International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 16million volunteering, volunteers, members, and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ...

and the

Auxiliary Territorial Service The Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS; often pronounced as an acronym) was the women's branch of the British Army during the World War II, Second World War. It was formed on 9 September 1938, initially as a women's voluntary service, and existe ...

respectively. Three artists, Thomas Hennell,

Eric Ravilious Eric William Ravilious (22 July 1903 – 2 September 1942) was a British painter, designer, book illustrator and wood-engraver. He grew up in Sussex, and is particularly known for his watercolours of the South Downs, Castle Hedingham and othe ...

and Albert Richards, were killed during the Second World War whilst working on WAAC commissions.

Publications

The committee produced two sets of four paperback booklets during the war, both called ''War Pictures by British Artists''. Each booklet consisted of an introductory essay and fifty black-and-white reproductions. The first set of four, entitled ''Army'', ''Blitz'', ''R.A.F'' and ''War at Sea'', sold some 24,000 copies and led to a second set, ''Air Raids'', ''Production'', ''Soldiers'' and ''Women'', being published in 1943. Attempts by the committee to produce more extensive and higher quality publications fell foul of war-time printing restrictions and rationing.

Exhibition programme

Overseas exhibitions

* ''Britain at War'' was the committee's major overseas exhibition with oils and watercolours from over thirty artists. It opened at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York, in May 1941, with some 3,000 people attending on the opening day. The selection of works was aimed at undermining American neutrality. The exhibition went on to Baltimore before fourteen images, with Canadian themes, were added for showings in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal. The exhibition was then split in two for display in Pittsburgh and London, Ontario before the entire catalogue was exhibited in San Francisco in 1942. ''Britain at War'' then toured Central and South America in place of 111 WAAC paintings that had been lost when the ship taking them to Rio de Janeiro was sunk. * ''India in Action'', which toured Australia, New Zealand and the United States in 1944 and 1945, consisted of fifty-one drawings by Anthony Gross, made in 1941-43 of Indian forces in the Far East. * An exhibition of over one hundred pictures was displayed in South Africa from 1944 to 1947.

UK exhibitions

WAAC organised exhibitions around the United Kingdom on a large scale and to a regular schedule. * The

Museums Association The Museums Association (MA) is a professional membership organisation based in London for museum, gallery and heritage professionals and organisations of the United Kingdom. It also offers international membership. History The association w ...

organised an exhibition of WAAC items which visited 65 venues, mostly regional museums and well established galleries. * Four exhibitions of WAAC war art were toured by the British Institute of Adult Education to eighty smaller, more informal locations. * With the National Gallery's own collection evacuated from London, WAAC used space in the Trafalgar Square building to display works from its growing collection. From July 1940 onwards, new works were added at regular intervals and the exhibition remained open throughout the war, bar a short period in October 1940 due to damage from air raids. * ''The War at Sea'';- shown at the National Gallery in September 1944 consisted of 52 paintings by Norman Wilkinson. Wilkinson was a World War I navy veteran and during World War II he travelled extensively on Royal Navy ships and was aboard on D-Day. WAAC bought one painting from Wilkinson and he donated the other fifty-one paintings to the committee. Throughout 1945 and 1946 the exhibition was shown in Australia and New Zealand. * 400 works from the collection were exhibited at the Glasgow Art Gallery in the spring of 1945. * A final exhibition of the WAAC collection was held at

Burlington House Burlington House is a building on Piccadilly in Mayfair, London. It was originally a private English Baroque and then Neo-Palladian mansion owned by the Earl of Burlington, Earls of Burlington. It was significantly expanded in the mid-19th cent ...

between 13 October and 25 November 1945. The exhibition consisted of 1028 drawings, paintings and prints plus twenty-one sculptures, but attracted less than 20,000 paying visitors in total.

Legacy

The WAAC was dissolved in December 1945 and its operations transferred to a joint committee of the Imperial War Museum and the Ministry of Information. When the Ministry of Information itself was disbanded in March 1946, WAAC's remaining responsibilities passed entirely to the

. Whilst some artists were still finishing WAAC contracts and money was available to purchase works to fill any gaps in the collection, the major responsibility at this point was deciding how to disperse the collection. The collection now consisted of 5,570 works of art. By the end of 1947 these works had been distributed to some sixty museums, galleries, government departments and other bodies in Britain and around the world. Care was taken to ensure that works by the finest artists was distributed as widely as possible. For example, the twenty-seven drawings by

Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract art, abstract monumental Bronze sculpture, bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. Moore ...

of coal mines and the London Underground shelters went to eleven different museums and galleries while the hundred or so works by

Graham Sutherland Graham Vivian Sutherland (24 August 1903 – 17 February 1980) was a prolific English artist. Notable for his paintings of abstract landscapes and for his portraits of public figures, Sutherland also worked in other media, including printmakin ...

were placed with thirty different institutions. Over half the collection, some 3,000 items, was acquired by the Imperial War Museum, while the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

took seventy-six pieces and the

British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lang ...

some twenty-five works.

WAAC artists

Thirty-six men and one woman were given full-time employment by the committee, a hundred other artists were given short-term contracts, and works by a further 264 artists, both professional and amateur, were purchased. Three artists donated works to the collection.

Artists on full-time salaried contracts

Artists given short-term WAAC contracts

Artists whose work was acquired by WAAC

References

{{Authority control 1939 establishments in the United Kingdom 20th century in the United Kingdom Cultural history of World War II Defunct departments of the Government of the United Kingdom Government agencies established in 1939 Organizations disestablished in 1945 United Kingdom home front during World War II United Kingdom in World War II British war artists Aviation artists