Bristol Aeroplane Company, Corsham by Olga Lehmann, oil on canvas

A versatile painter, illustrator and designer, Olga Lehmann was one of few wartime artists who received steady commissions outside of the Official War Artists’ scheme.

As a student at the Slade School of Fine Art Lehmann had excelled in mural painting, and in 1943 she was invited to paint murals for the Bristol Aeroplane Company’s underground factory at Corsham, where aircraft engines were made. She recalled: 'I was approached by David Aberdeen, a young architect who had been at the Bartlett School of Architecture while I was at The Slade, and when I showed interest, he took me down to the West Country to meet Mr. Tucker, the head man at the BAC'. With fellow muralist Gilbert Wood, Lehmann created colourful, imaginative leisure scenes to ‘provide a measure of cheer for the workers’ on the factory's walls. In this painting, and in drawings and watercolours, Lehmann depicted the 'underground city' itself, describing the factory's winding passages, workers - male and female - and industrial equipment. Lehmann based her painting on a watercolour composition (FA01369), adding further figures and details. Recounting her first impressions of the factory, she explained: 'We were driven to a barren terrain where a structure like the entrance to a mine rose up ... The tunnel turned out to be lit by a novel type of fluorescent lighting, resembling true daylight ... Most of the walls had been hewn out of the rock and a good deal of the surface was built of bricks ... We lost all sense of direction ... We walked around part of the factory and could see, down at the sides, rows of workers and the enormous machines at which they worked ... It all seemed endless'. Purchased in 1990. Copyright: the artist's estate / RAF Museum.