Direct Hit by Adrian Hill, ink on paper

This Blitz scene is one of several drawings Adrian Hill made of Second World War subjects, and it might have formed part of a sequence of his ink drawings in the RAF Museum collection.

Hill had served in the First World War and was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to produce Western Front drawings. In 1940, during the Second World War, he made watercolours of the unspoilt British landscape for the ‘Recording Britain’ project, in anticipation of a German invasion. From this time, he also pioneered the discipline of ‘art therapy’, assisting convalescent Armed Services personnel whom he would encourage to draw, sometimes from images of war – a possible context for this drawing. Purchased in 1990. Copyright: the artist's estate / RAF Museum.