Study: A Balloon Site, Coventry (VII) by Dame Laura Knight, watercolour and charcoal on paper

This compositional study representing female balloon operators manoeuvering a barrage balloon is one of several preparatory drawings by Dame Laura Knight for a painting commissioned by the War Office to encourage recruitment of women to RAF Balloon Command - 'A Balloon Site: Coventry' (1942, Imperial War Museums). Months earlier, in 1941, WAAF operators replaced men at RAF Balloon Command.

Following the devastating Blitz raids over Coventry in 1940-41, Knight was briefed to attract 'the right sort' of women to enlist; thus she emphasised their agility and strength in handling the unwieldy balloon. In her introduction to 'War Pictures by British Artists: Women' (1943), she described the balloon anthropomorphically, as seeming to have a life of its own: 'Come fine, come storm, by day or by night, the Balloon must go up or down, be tended as a living thing, a guardian. The occasion may be a mere point's change in the wind: her wings deflate, flap and inflate; unwieldy, she dips her monstrous bulk as the "hands" manoeuvre her like ants with an egg ... to-day the Balloon is storm-bedded; the lashings, a network on its sides, press into the flesh of a colossal silver toad.' Bequest of the artist. Copyright: the artist's estate and Bridgeman Images / RAF Museum.