Pews in St Mary's Church, Whitby; Recording Britain

Physical description

Pews in St.Mary`s Church, Whitby, watercolour, church interior with pews and tombstones.

Place of Origin

Whitby, England (painted)

Date

1940 (painted)

Artist/maker

Rowntree, born 1915 - died 1997 (artist)

Materials and Techniques

Watercolour and body colour painting on paper

Marks and inscriptions

'Kenneth Rowntree '40'

Dimensions

Height: 31.8 cm, Width: 47 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 ran in 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

Pews in St.Mary`s Church, Whitby by Kenneth Rowntree, watercolour, Britain, 20th century.

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:
YORKSHIRE.
[...]
ROWNTREE, Kenneth, A.R.W.S.
[...]
Pews in St.Mary’s Church, Whitby.
Signed and dated in pencil, Kenneth Rowntree ‘40.
Water and body-colour (12 1/2 x 18 1/2)
neg.no.A.176.

E.2592-1949'
Palmer, Arnold, ed. Recording Britain. London: Oxford University Press, 1946-49. Vol 2: Essex, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, Northhamptonshire and Rutlandshire, Norfolk, Yorkshire. Introduction to Yorkshire, p.175.
'Spaciousness seems to beget spaciousness, as Americans know. In Yorkshire the mansions, the abbeys, the landscape itself tend to be enormous. They also tend to have been recorded already, by Turner, by Cotman, and by hundreds of painters on holiday. Here will be found nothing of York Minster, of Wentworth or Castle Howard, or of the great Cistercian abbeys save one whose name (Byland) is better known to antiquarians than to the ordinary traveller. The artists were sent in search of smaller game as a rule and, true to intention, they returned with humbler buildings, views less renowned; scenes which, after long and unpretentious careers, have acquired the dignity always conferred by defencelessness.'

Materials

Paper; Watercolour; Body colour

Techniques

Painting

Subjects depicted

Buildings; Churches; Death; Yorkshire; Interior; Worship; Interiors (religious); Tombstones; Whitby; Pews

Categories

Religion; Christianity; Interiors; Paintings; Recording Britain Collection

Collection code

PDP