Author Description

Evelyn Dunbar holds a unique position in twentieth-century British art. Described by William Rothenstein, when principal of the Royal College of Art, as one of the most promising of the younger painters, with real genius, she specialised in mural painting at the RCA and carried out decorations at Brockley School, Lewisham from 1933-36 under Charles Mahoney s direction. It was at Brockley that her work first gained public notice and wide acclaim. Dunbar s most successful and extensive body of work dates from the Second World War when she was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee, and so became the only woman, on a salaried basis, to record women s activities on the Home Front. It was for her lyrical but unsentimental paintings of the Women s Land Army that she is especially known.These provide an important documentary record of women s work and contribution to the war effort. Like many other war artists she tended to fall out of sight of the mainstream, modernist art world followi