The London Blitz – Whitechapel Bomb Victim by Claude Rowberry, watercolour and charcoal on paper

This is one of many works by Claude Rowberry that show the human cost of air raids. He visited bomb sites with his sketchbook and painted this graphic scene after first-hand observation.

Rowberry served as a Sergeant in the Tanks Corps during the First World War and as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army during the Second World War. As a self-taught artist, he was a compulsive sketcher and sometimes drew disturbing scenes of death and destruction, defying the conventions of professional war artists which had been prescribed by the War Artists' Advisory Committee. Throughout his lifetime he hid these private drawings from others, which were found and exhibited after his death in the 1960s. Purchased in 2001. Copyright: the artist's estate / RAF Museum.