Shelter Scenes, Tilbury, 1941 (watercolour, paper, board, wood, glass)

Creator: Ardizzone, Edward Jeffrey Irving (1900-79) People shelter from the Blitz under railway arches, London, 1941. By the wall to the left in the background is a tea stall, while groups of men, women and children talk and play in the central aisle. A man is digging a pile of earth or sand in the right foreground. The railway arches were one of the largest air raid shelters in Britain. Edward Ardizzone was a British painter, writer, print-maker, acclaimed illustrator of children's books, and a regular cartoonist for Punch magazine. In 1940 he began working full-time for the War Office as an official war artist, documenting his experiences in the Second World War through drawings and diaries, now held by Imperial War Museums. This artwork is the largest work he produced in the Second World War, a period in which he covered locations as diverse as the UK, Northern Europe, Sicily and North Africa. The House of Illustration held a major retrospective of Ardizzone's work in 2016. Awarded a CBE in 1971, the artist’s work is also held in many major collections including the British Museum and Tate Britain.