Study for ‘Take Off’: Flight Engineer by Dame Laura Knight, charcoal and watercolour on paper

This preparatory study of Flight Sergeant Alexander Quadling, a Flight Engineer, is one of many Knight made for the painting ‘Take Off’ (1943, Imperial War Museums), in which she represented a Stirling bomber crew at RAF Mildenhall preparing for flight.

In the oil painting Quadling’s extended hand – loosely sketched in this drawing – operates a switch on the Flight Engineer’s panel. As Britain’s most celebrated female artist at the time, Knight received numerous short-term Official War Artist commissions. However, she was overlooked for the long-term salaried contracts her male peers received. Although this was her only representation of a military offensive, Knight’s crew portrait became an iconic image of Bomber Command propaganda. Bequest of the artist, 1974. Copyright: the artist's estate and Bridgeman Images / RAF Museum.