Cache of unseen World War Two artworks acquired by National Maritime Museum

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

A series of tender sketches made by Red Cross nurse Rosemary Rutherford during World War Two have been acquired by the National Maritime Museum

A cache of hitherto unseen sketches made by an artist who joined the Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse during World War Two has been acquired by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

The 17 vivid sketches, of patients and medical staff in naval medical wards, were made by Rosemary Rutherford (1912-1972), a devout Christian and painter who joined the detachment in 1940 and experienced first-hand the casualties of war.

Having passed through the Slade School of Art, Rutherford successfully petitioned the War Artist Advisory Committee to allow her to record some of her experiences as a VAD nurse through sketches and paintings. The results offer an insider’s eye of the work of medical personnel in the hospitals and sick bays of the Royal Navy during wartime.

In works such as The Temporary Operating Theatre, a blur of rapidly scribbled pen and ink cross hatchings and circular swoops of medical personnel manhandling a stretcher up some awkward stairs she captured the chaos of war. The sketch also brings to mind the Barbara Hepworth NHS sketches made a decade later. 

Other coloured watercolour sketches seem to be in thrall to her Slade alumnus Stanley Spencer, whose Cookham memorial paintings have a similar subject matter and spiritual quality; the themes of rebirth and Christ-like resurrection are often close at hand as nurses lift patients and doctors inspect eyes and ears of passive service personnel.  

Rutherford performed a variety of jobs as a VAD, including driving a mobile canteen round gun batteries and working as a nurse in hospitals and convalescent homes for servicemen.

After the war she returned to her art and was for a time associated with Cedric Morris and Lett  Haines’ East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at Benton End, in Suffolk. But her wartime sketches were placed into a folio and forgotten for more than 60 years.

The acquisition, which came about as part of the museum’s research for its upcoming publication Art and the War at Sea (edited by Dr Christine Riding, Head of Art at Royal Museums Greenwich), complements the existing resident collection of fine war art, including drawings by the Wren Gladys E Reed and merchant seaman John Kingsley Cook.

It also creates an opportunity for the museum to further examine and explore the topic of convalescence of seafaring personnel as well as enrich its holdings of works produced by female war artists, which are currently being conserved and digitized.

Describing the acquisition as a “thrill” and an “honour”, Dr Riding said Rutherford’s “sensitive and often deeply spiritual" observations on naval hospital life are unique in the collections because of their range from the specific to the "truly universal.”

• A small selection of the drawings will go on display for the first time at the Museum’s adult Halloween event, Voyage of the Damned, on October 31 2015, when Dr Christine Riding will discuss the poignant drawings as well as the upcoming publication of the book. Visit the National Maritime Museum website for more details.

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Read Culture24's guides to art during World War Two:
 
War Artists - World War Two On Canvas And Paper

War Artists - World War Two On Canvas And Paper Part Two: The Theatre Of War

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/military-history/world-war-two/art539205-cache-of-unseen-world-war-two-artworks-acquired-by-national-maritme-museum