Street in Exeter; Recording Britain

Physical description

Watercolour; signed. View of a residential street in Exeter, looking down the hill.

Place of Origin

Exeter, England (made)

Date

ca.1940 (made)

Artist/maker

Rogers, born 1907 - died 1979 (artist)

Materials and Techniques

Pen and ink and watercolour painting on paper

Marks and inscriptions

'Claude Rogers'

Dimensions

Height: 22.9 cm, Width: 30.5 cm

Object history note

This work is from the 'Recording Britain' collection of topographical watercolours and drawings made in the early 1940s during the Second World War. In 1940 the Committee for the Employment of Artists in Wartime, part of the Ministry of Labour and National Service, launched a scheme to employ artists to record the home front in Britain, funded by a grant from the Pilgrim Trust. It ran until 1943 and some of the country's finest watercolour painters, such as John Piper, Sir William Russell Flint and Rowland Hilder, were commissioned to make paintings and drawings of buildings, scenes, and places which captured a sense of national identity. Their subjects were typically English: market towns and villages, churches and country estates, rural landscapes and industries, rivers and wild places, monuments and ruins. Northern Ireland was not covered, only four Welsh counties were included, and a separate scheme covered Scotland.

The scheme was known as 'Recording the changing face of Britain' and was established by Sir Kenneth Clark, then the director of the National Gallery. It ran alongside the official War Artists' Scheme, which he also initiated. Clark was inspired by several motives: at the outbreak of war in 1939, there was a concern to document the British landscape in the face of the imminent threat of bomb damage, invasion, and loss caused by the operations of war. This was allied to an anxiety about changes to the landscape already underway, such as the rapid growth of cities, road building and housing developments, the decline of rural ways of life and industries, and new agricultural practices, which together contributed to the idea of a 'vanishing Britain'. Clark also wanted to help artists, and the traditional forms of British art such as watercolour painting, to survive during the uncertain conditions of wartime. He in turn was inspired by America's Federal Arts Project which was designed to give artists employment during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Over 1500 works were eventually produced by 97 artists, of whom 63 were specially commissioned. At the time the collection had a propaganda role, intended to boost national morale by celebrating Britain's landscapes and heritage. Three exhibitions were held during the war at the National Gallery, and pictures from the collection were sent on touring exhibitions and to galleries all around the country. After the war, the whole collection was given to the V&A by the Pilgrim Trust in 1949, and it was documented in a four volume catalogue published between 1946 and 1949. For many years the majority of the collection was on loan to councils and record offices in each county, until recalled by the V&A around 1990. The pictures now form a memorial to the war effort, and a unique record of their time.

Descriptive line

Watercolour by Claude Rogers, 'Street in Exeter', from the Recording Britain Collection (Devonshire); signed; England, ca.1940.

Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)

Catalogue of Drawings in the 'Recording Britain' Collection given by the Pilgrim Trust to the Victoria and Albert Museum published by the Victoria and Albert Museum, Prints, Drawings and Paintings Department, 1951.
The full text of the entry is as follows:
'DEVONSHIRE.

[…]
ROGERS, Claude.

[…]

Street in Exeter.
Signed in pencil Claude Rogers.
Pen and ink and water-colour (9 x 12)

E.1308-1949'
Palmer, Arnold, ed. Recording Britain. London: Oxford University Press, 1946-49. Vol. 4: Wiltshire, Somerset, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent. Introduction to Devonshire, p.81.
'Few counties…have had more recorders, amateur and professional. Consequently there were dozens, scores of subjects which, though everyone came forward to suggest them, we were able to ignore. Indeed…the first claims were narrowed to two districts, one in the north and one in the south. Both of them, having suffered development as healthy coastal areas, suddenly found themselves, in war-time slang, unhealthy coastal areas. There was the Kingsbridge peninsula, especially the east side of it, and there was (less urgently) Ilfracombe. After the work began, Exeter was substituted for Ilfracombe, and a dozen drawings of the old capital were secured; and although, when the city sustained such heavy damage from air-raids, we naturally wished we had more of them, the regret was one to which, by then, we were only too well accustomed.

The recordings of the county numbered twenty-eight. In the selection here offered, the scenes all lie in or between Dartmouth and Exeter.'

Materials

Paper; Watercolour; Ink

Techniques

Painting

Subjects depicted

Topographical views; Devon; Street scenes; Exeter; Town views

Categories

Paintings; Recording Britain Collection

Collection code

PDP