Like Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer and Henry Moore, he is enlisted as a “war artist” for the duration of the war; from 1940 to 1945 he works full-time on salary for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee. Working in London, in remote English counties and in France, he produces many watercolours and pen and pencil drawings, and some 150 paintings for the committee.
1944
Commissioned by Walter Hussey to paint “The Crucifixion”
Walter Hussey, vicar (other accounts say canon) of St Matthew’s Church in Northampton and an important patron of modern religious art, commissions “The Crucifixion” from him. It becomes his first major religious painting and his first large figure study.
December 1944
Sent to France to depict raid damage
In December 1944 he is sent to France to depict the damage inflicted by the RAF on the railway yards at Trappes and on the flying bomb sites at Saint-Leu-d’Esserent.
