The London Blitz – Interior of a Ruined House by Claude Rowberry, gouache and charcoal on paper

This gouache painting represents a deceased figure amid the rubble of a bombed house, a scene from the London Blitz witnessed and recorded by Lieutenant Colonel Claude Rowberry.

Rowberry had served as a sergeant in the Tank Corps during the First World War and enrolled again in the Army during the Second World War. He had always compulsively sketched the scenes he encountered, including many of wartime destruction. Some were graphic visions of bodies amid debris. As a self-taught artist, Rowberry flouted the typical conventions of Official War Artists, who were briefed to represent civilian endurance rather than suffering or death. Purchased in 2001. Copyright: the artist's estate / RAF Museum.