page_title: Eric Kennington
section_title: Second World War
hierarchical_section_title: Eric Kennington / Biography / Second World War
caption_attribution_description: English: Parachutes image: a parachute drop at night, in fields with trees. Some parachutes are still falling, others are on the ground.
context_page_description: Eric Henri Kennington RA was an English sculptor, artist and illustrator, and an official war artist in both World Wars.
  As a war artist, Kennington specialised in depictions of the daily hardships endured by soldiers and airmen. In the inter-war years he worked mostly on portraits and a number of book illustrations. The most notable of his book illustrations were for T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Kennington was also a gifted sculptor, best known for his 24th East Surrey Division War Memorial in Battersea Park, for his work on the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and for the tomb effigy of Lawrence at Wareham in Dorset.
context_section_description: By November 1938 Kennington was certain that another World War was inevitable and he approached the Home Office with a proposal to establish a group to design camouflage schemes for large public buildings. Alongside Richard Carline, Leon Underwood and others he worked in a section attached to the Air Raid Precautions Department of the Home Office until war broke out.
  At the start of the Second World War, Kennington produced a number of pastel portraits of Royal Navy officers for the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC), on short-term contracts. These portraits were among the highlights of the first WAAC exhibition at the National Gallery in the summer of 1940. Kennington also painted a portrait of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound. Pound was seriously ill when Kennington sketched him and although the Admiralty were pleased with the image they refused permission for it to be displayed until after Pound died in October 1943. Kennington next painted several younger seamen, several of whom had survived shipwrecks. By May 1940 Kennington was frustrated by WAAC's lack of urgency in putting forward subjects for him to paint and resigned his contract. He joined the newly formed Home Guard and was given command of a six-man section at Ipsden.
  In August 1940 the  WAAC Committee offered him a full-time salaried contract to work for the Air Ministry, which he accepted. Among Kennington's first RAF portraits was one of Squadron Leader Roderick Learoyd VC. The sitting took place on the afternoon of 7 September 1940 at the Air Ministry building in London and was interrupted by an air-raid siren which, after Learoyd had looked outside to see where the German planes were heading, the two men ignored. By March 1941 Kennington was based at RAF Wittering, a Night Fighter base. Here, as well as portraits Kennington produced some more imaginative works, including In the Flare Path and Stevens' Rocket. Kennington next spent some time at Bomber Command bases in Norfolk before moving to RAF Ringway near Manchester where the Parachute Regiment were training. Although over-age, Kennington undertook at least one parachute jump at Ringwood. In September 1941 he self-published an illustrated booklet, Pilots, Workers, Machines to great acclaim.
  Kennington continued to travel around Britain to produce hundreds of portraits of Allied flight crew and other service personnel until September 1942 when he resigned his commission because he felt that WAAC were failing to capitalise on the propaganda value of his work in their publications and posters.  Some 52 of Kennington's RAF portraits were published in a 1942 WAAC book, Drawing the RAF. This was followed in 1943 with Tanks and Tank Folk, illustrations from Kennington's time with the 11th Armoured Division near Ripon in Yorkshire. In 1945 Kennington supplied the illustrations for Britain's Home Guard by John Brophy. Darracott and Loftus describe how in both wars "his drawings and letters show him to be an admirer of the heroism of ordinary men and women", an admiration which is particularly notable in the poster series "Seeing it Through", with poems by A. P. Herbert, a personal friend of his.
caption: Parachutes (1941), Art.IWM ART LD1259
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