Driver on Duty at an Ambulance Station by Elsie Gledstanes, watercolour on paper

This watercolour is one of many Elsie Gledstanes made as a volunteer for the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service during the Blitz. Later in life she gifted several works to the Imperial War Museum.

Gledstanes trained at the Slade School of Fine Art and the Byam Shaw School of Art, and exhibited at the Royal Academy. In the First World War, she volunteered for the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) where, at Immingham and Portsmouth, she photographed and painted fellow WRNS officers. At the outbreak of the Second World War, aged 49, she volunteered again, sketching drivers, nurses and orderlies of the Ambulance Service for her watercolours and oil paintings. Purchased in 1990. Copyright: the artist's estate / RAF Museum.