Abstract
Eric Kennington (1888–1960) enjoyed a distinguished career as both artist and sculptor, his portraiture being considered by critics as worthy of comparison with Hans Holbein the Younger, Franz Hals, Van Gogh, and Augustus John. Although his war memorial sculpture has been previously shown, his Second World War portraiture has not been displayed in a single exhibition. As an official and semi-official war artist, in addition to drawing the Royal Air Force – the vast bulk of his portraiture – he produced portraits for the Royal Navy, British army, the auxiliary services, London Transport, and industry. The 36 portraits at the RAF Museum, London, represent a cross-section of the armed services and home front. Both the exhibition and this accompanying book reappraise Kennington’s work, suggesting that he warrants consideration as one of the great portraitists of the twentieth century. He was greatly esteemed by his contemporaries as a leading draughtsman, and his admirers included Winston Churchill, J.B. Priestley, Siegfried Sassoon, George Bernard Shaw, and T.E. Lawrence – the latter the subject of a famous portrait.
Britain’s war artists represented a diversity of talent, approach, and experience, producing some 6000 works of art in 1939–45, much of which is held by the RAF Museum and the Imperial War Museum. Kennington had been an official war artist from 1917, and was so again in late 1939, having a contract with the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC). A number of other portraitists worked for the WAAC, but Kennington’s work in charcoal and pastels is the more striking; his often brilliant use of colour and tone, arresting.
The book is organized chronologically. Chapter 1, ‘Return of an Old Stager: With the High Command and the Royal Navy, November 1939 – May 1940’, covers Kennington’s portraits of several senior commanders, and thereafter, officers and men of the Royal Navy all having shown heroism under fire. Having completed this commission, Kennington was shocked to be without work (which reveals something of the WAAC’s disorganization), and promptly joined both the Observer Corps and the Home Guard. In August 1940 he was again commissioned by the WAAC, and chapter 2, ‘With “The Intrepid Aviators” during the Battle of Britain, August–December 1940’, covers his portraits of bomber aircrew and fighter pilots during this momentous period. Foremost in the public’s affections, the RAF’s deeds received immense media attention later in 1940, and the young aircrew were greatly admired by the artist. Captured obliquely as serious and resolute, very few were drawn looking directly at him. Despite the hard business of war, it is striking that Kennington avoided making his sitters appear overly aggressive; yet his hard-edged portraits with their ‘stark emphasis of bone and sinew’ nonetheless conveyed these warrior heroes’ determination and grit.
Sitters, usually drawn from the chest up, often wore flying kit including Irvin jackets, silk scarves, Mae Wests, polo-neck sweaters, and, less commonly, flying helmets. Occasionally – Flying Officer Lewis is an example – the sitter might be fully dressed in flying kit, helmet, and gloves, perhaps to hide serious burns sustained in action. Pilots’ RAF ‘wings’ and medal ribbons were usually shown, and fighter pilot Richard Hillary, author of The Last Enemy, and who in 1942 self-commissioned his portrait, seems to have prevailed upon Kennington to obscure his lack of a Distinguished Flying Cross – the portrait is carefully cropped. Badly burned in the battle of Britain, Hillary exclaimed upon seeing it that ‘I’ve got a face’, but his father thought Kennington had not caught his likeness. Over 40 of Kennington’s aircrew sitters, including Hillary, did not survive the war.
Kennington paid attention to both the ‘nobs’, as he described the upper classes, and also the humbler hero. Self-effacing Sergeant John Hannah, awarded the Victoria Cross for heroism in a bomber over Antwerp, looks modestly matter-of-fact. Conversely, Kennington’s impromptu portrait of Aircraftman First Class Stroud, whose principal qualification was to have shown cheerfulness under fire during the artist’s airfield visit to draw decorated pilots, was less clearly in line with his WAAC commission. Air Commodore Harald Peake, head of the Air Ministry’s Directorate of Public Relations, had strong views about subjects for portraiture, as Kennington was frequently reminded; in other words, decorated officer aircrew, not ground crews. More broadly, socialist writer and broadcaster J.B. Priestley noted in an introduction to a book of Kennington’s portraits that most of Kennington’s subjects were drawn from middle society. He astonished the artist by asking £100 for the piece.
Pleased with his portraits, the WAAC continued to employ Kennington for RAF work, as is addressed in chapter 3, ‘Into the Boxing Ring: Learning the RAF in 1941’. The 1941 drawing of crack night-fighter Pilot Officer Richard Stevens at readiness in his Hurricane cockpit was a rare ‘prop’ concession for RAF subjects. This may also have pleased Peake, who demanded more variety from Kennington in the form of aircraft and perhaps war scenes – doubtless with his celebrated First World War The Kensingtons at Laventie in mind – which the painter also resisted. As an aside, surrealist painter Paul Nash fell foul of Peake precisely because he was not adept at portraiture and focused instead upon aerial combat, his 1941 The Battle of Britain being the most famous example.
Other mid-war work included portraits of Polish, French, Czechoslovak, and Norwegian aircrew, but also tank crewmen, as covered in chapter 4, ‘Fighting Spirit: With the Tanks and the RAF, 1941–42’. The latter portraits were striking for the inclusion of perhaps a tank in the back- or foreground, or other props such as a machine gun. By September 1942 Kennington had become so disenchanted with both Peake and the WAAC – partly because it failed to make his and other artists’ work available to a mass audience – that he ceased drawing the RAF. This followed an exchange of letters with the overburdened chief of the air staff, Sir ‘Peter’ Portal.
Kennington was promptly commissioned by the War Office’s PR department, as chapter 5, ‘Becoming a Pirate: With the Infantry and the Home Guard, 1942–43’, conveys. Here, too, Kennington captured his sitters’ characters and personalities sometimes to the subject’s delight, or perhaps modest embarrassment. Occasionally, as in the case of Home Guard Sergeant Major William Waters, the sitter might take mild exception, say, to being given a more splendid proboscis than was strictly warranted. Kennington produced a number of army ‘action scenes’ with several men portrayed during this later war period.
Final chapters include ‘Brave People in a People’s War: Later War Works, 1944–45’ and the author’s coda, ‘“A Piece of Grit in the Works”: Post-War, 1945–60’. Kennington’s last war portraits were of six London Transport workers used for posters, and thereafter of industrial workers who had displayed acts of bravery. Not all were impressed by home front portraiture: some critics argued that the results were sometimes sinister, or over-idealized, and glamorized ordinary people. Exhausted, in July 1944 Kennington returned home to rest, his work as a war artist winding down.
Some 103 good-quality colour and black and white images of Kennington’s work are included in this book, in addition to 32 other illustrations. Portraits are accompanied by sometimes detailed information about the sitter’s deeds. In some respects more focus on this fascinating artist would have been welcome, including a full life chronology. Source references confirm extensive contemporary archival material, but the bibliography omits books perhaps worthy of inclusion.
This engaging and detailed book – and the exhibition – is a fitting tribute to a deeply patriotic and religious man who found people far more fascinating than objects and action. Kennington’s style may not have been to everyone’s taste but his vivid portraiture captures the essence of both those doing the fighting and those working for victory on the home front. In truth, its tone differed little from the many other forms of propaganda proclaiming the understated heroism of the People’s War.