THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN PORTRAITS
There is a certain indefinable, yet physical, series of facial phenomena that happens to very young men engaged in a battle in which there is a distinct possibility they may be killed or horribly wounded. Their faces become leaner, the features more taut, the eyes more distrustful, the skin prematurely lined, the countenances more... well, beautiful. Even the most homely of these men carry the “look”—that mixture of toughness, loneliness, determination, distance, fear, experience and confidence that gives to their once boyish faces a look of indescribable strength, character, sorrow and virile beauty.
Over the past ten years, researching and mining the Internet for background material and images for our stories, I have viewed thousands upon thousands of photographs of RAF pilots and aircrew. The photographs depicted young men in two ways—either the formal post-wings parade studio photographs taken for family and girlfriends or candid personal record shots of young men, beaming and exuberant, during their training days; wistful, tired and deeply aged just months later, after combat took its toll. These photographs, especially the personal snapshot, have a certain truth that is ours to interpret, leaving us to sort out the meaning of the smile, the reason behind the look of exhaustion, the story in the old eyes in a young man’s body.
From time to time, I would come across a portrait in charcoal or pastels that seemed to say something entirely different about an aviator—something that a photograph could not. As time went on, I began to save these portraits in a folder. Soon, I had more than forty such images of artists’ portraits. There were a number of portrait war artists whose works were in this folder, but the great majority of them were done by two men—Eric Henri Kennington and Cuthbert Julian Orde—during a period beginning during the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 and ending in 1944. The great majority of these portraits were of airmen who participated in, or were peripheral to, the Battle of Britain—either as leaders or contemporaries engaged by Bomber Command.
The subject of a studio photograph was asked to sit still for only a few seconds at a time, usually in the same lighting as every other subject. These photographers were, for the most part, true craftsmen, whose photographs were gorgeous expressions of light and manhood, considerably better than the average Walmart photographer that families flock to at Christmas time these days. But a sitter for a portrait artist like Kennington or Orde was required to sit for hours, even days, at a time. Often the artist would spend some time with his “sitter” or subject, getting to know him, allowing him to relax, to feel a certain ease. The act of simply being yourself and sitting for hours at a time seems to bring to the surface inner strength, nobility, weakness, sorrow and perhaps that person who dwells inside—the aggressive pugilist in New Zealander “Al” Deere, the smiling, almost sneering, disdain of Englishman “Archie” McKellar, the pain and sadness in the eyes of John Boulter.
Not long ago, I started to search the Internet specifically for portraits done by either Orde or Kennington and I was astonished, or rather gobsmacked, to discover the sheer amount of portraiture work each of these fine artists had created during the Second World War. One of the finest resources for me was the fabulous Battle of Britain London Monument (BBLM) website which lists, by country, every pilot who participated in the Battle of Britain, along with biographies of varying completeness and, where possible, photographs and images of any portraits painted of the subject by Orde or Kennington. The work that the team at the BBLM site has done is nothing short of awe-inspiring. They have come very close to collecting the personal stories of each of the nearly 3,000 pilots who participated. I highly recommend you take an hour or so to visit the site.
I decided that I would make an online repository for as many of their portrait works as I could assemble. Kennington was a prolific portraitist with many military portraits of men and women of the other services and even civilian war workers, but this repository would be only for airmen. Orde also did many war art works other than portraits. As the war began to produce a long list of heroic and tragic individuals, both Orde and Kennington, recognized war artists and former military men, were contracted by the Royal Air Force to do portraits of airmen—mostly pilots and senior commanders. For the most part, the RAF selected the sitters, mostly based on their successes as fighter pilots or leaders. These young men would pay a visit to the artist’s studio, or in the case of many of the subjects, at the Air Ministry in London where a small studio had been set up for the purpose.
It cannot be overstated that having one’s portrait commissioned by the Royal Air Force and being invited to the Air Ministry to sit, was a high honour for any of these young men. Author and art historian Jonathan Black, in his definitive work on Kennington: The Face of Courage: Eric Kennington, Portraiture and the Second World War, wrote of one particular Blenheim pilot who wrote to Kennington to express his gratitude: “Words cannot tell you how much I appreciate your portrait, or the privilege I feel at having the honour to sit for you. It is so incredibly like me and yet, I wish I had half the character you have portrayed and when I look at it, I know that it is the character that I want to be rather than who I am…”
John Boynton Priestly, author and social commentator, who wrote the introduction to a book which included some of Kennington’s portrait work, said this in The Face of Courage about the men who sat for the artist: “… I think that it can be said that they truly represent the middle classes from which they are drawn… These are some of the young men who are not only battling in the skies to preserve our present freedom but will also, with any luck, be among those who will help to build the future Britain.” Sadly, of the 98 portraits that follow, half the young sitters were dead by the end of the war or shortly thereafter, in accidents in the new jet age.
For my taste, the works of Kennington, dramatically impressionistic, stylish and heroic, inspire more emotion in me than Orde’s. At times, the sheer volume of Orde’s work and his robotic style comes close to what you might see from one of those gifted mall artists. But where Kennington’s sitters, for the most part, exude strength and heroic dash, Orde’s works display a wider range of emotions—doubt, exhaustion, aggressiveness and even fear. Both men captured something we cannot see.
It is important to state a few things about this repository of images of the works of Orde and Kennington. Firstly, some of the images which I found on the Internet are merely details from a slightly larger work (as in Geoffrey Tuttle’s portrait) and in almost every case, the colour is not correct. The edges of the art boards are cropped off in most cases, though this does not impact the work to any great extent. In several, the original is a colour pastel or oil work, but the only image found was a scan from a black and white reproduction in a book. These are quite simply the only scans from the original work that I could find.
Not all the images in this collection are of sitters who participated in the Battle of Britain. Many, like the 609 Squadron pilot series by Cuthbert Orde were done months and even years later, but they certainly find their roots in the Battle of Britain work that he did.
For me, this repository is like an art exhibit of the work of two of the greatest war artists of the Second World War. To allow their works to be seen in this light, I placed each piece in a frame and matte, and “hung” them on a wall, two at a time. Perhaps that is corny... but I like the effect.
It is also important to emphasize that these are by no means all the works in this niche by either artist and that if someone should take offense by the inclusion of one or more of the works, I would be happy to remove that piece or pieces. And, on the other hand, if someone would like to draw my attention to another for inclusion, by all means send it and perhaps the airman’s biography to accompany it. The biographies themselves are intentionally light, some longer than others for no particular reason. For information, I sourced histories from wikis, the Imperial War Museum, RAF Museum, BBLM and squadron association websites, blogs, forums and personal memoirs. I make no claim that they are authoritative in any way. They are meant to illustrate the depth of the service each man offered up. Should anything I included not be factual or incorrect in anyway, I would be delighted to hear from you and make the correction. The intention is to do honour to both Orde and Kennington and their sitters.
The biographies of each airman include the Gazetted Commonwealth decorations which they were awarded... to the best of my knowledge. They do not, however, include those decorations awarded to them from other nations such as Poland, France, America or Holland. Many of these great men were awarded these equally important decorations, but for brevity, I left them out. One can always search for these men on the Internet to see the additional “gongs” they were awarded.
Now, with all these caveats out of the way, let’s look at some powerful work. These were the Few, some of the finest men of the Second World War. None of them are alive today.
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The Task Continues
Both Eric Kennington and Cuthbert Orde were prodigious in their artistic output. I have probably discovered only a portion of their work on the Internet and it has taken several weeks of work to bring together all the portraits, research and write a synopsis of each airman’s life and contribution to victory in the Second World War. If any reader has other images of portraits by either Kennington or Orde, please feel free to send them along with a short bio of the subject, and I will add them to the story, which we hope will become a repository of both the airmen and the artists’ contribution to ultimate victory. The following portraits will, in the days ahead be accompanied by short biographies as well.
Dave O’Malley