Little Ships by Sybil Andrews, oil on canvas

This is one of seven paintings Andrews made about boat building, which she developed after the war from wartime sketches taken while working for the British Power Boat Company in Hythe, Southampton, which built high-speed launch craft for RAF air sea rescue missions.

Andrews wanted to represent industrial scenes as an Official War Artist, and in a letter to the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (WAAC), dated July 1940, she asserted that the machinery of modern warfare - 'grim battleships, hulking tanks and streamlined planes' - could ‘only be convincingly expressed by strong, constructive, dramatic treatment and striking pattern and action, not by mere wishy-washy “reporting” better done by a camera’. The War Artists scheme, however, required ‘artistic records’ ordinary people could relate to, and her modernist style, developed through her relationship with the Grosvenor School artist Cyril Power, was rejected. Better known for her vibrant linocut prints, Andrews described her practice in a range of media, including drypoint engraving, watercolour and oil painting, as 'characterised by strong constructive pattern design'. Enclosing examples of her prints for the Committee's perusal, she explained that they were not indicative of the works she hoped to paint but that she had been prevented from sketching the industrial sites she had in mind. All artists representing the war effort, including those who worked independently from the War Artists scheme, were required to apply to the Committee for sketching permits, to protect information from passing into enemy hands. In response to her correspondence, the Committee arranged to return her prints, making no offer to assist her with the required permit. Andrews was skilled in practical labour, which she had undertaken in the First World War, as an acetylene welder for the Bristol Aeroplane Company, before enrolling at Heatherly's School of Art. To assume similar trades work in the Second World War, she trained in carpentry. This led to her becoming a boat builder for the British Power Boat Company in April 1941. For many months, she was unable to sketch the vessels in her midst. However, in the autumn of that year she finally found herself permitted to do so, albeit unofficially, after securing the Company's written approval on the understanding that any resulting paintings would be made after the war. Produced somewhat late as war pictures, these paintings therefore exemplify the obstacles Andrews faced as a determined unofficial war artist, and as a female artist who grappled with a patriarchal art world. That she kept the Boat Company's letters until her death in 1992 may be a testament to her gratitude for such support to make war art, if not to document her hard-won contribution to it. Most female artists practising during the war did so independently, and less than 10 percent of works commissioned or purchased by the Committee were by women. Purchased from the Parkin Gallery in 1980. Copyright: Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta, Canada / RAF Museum.