Grove House, Regent’s Park, Enid Marx

A month after the start of the Second World War in 1939 Clark wrote to an official at the Ministry:  “I need not tell you what terrible distress the war is causing among artists. The situation is so serious that I have been wondering if it would not be desirable for the Government to take some action… I have in mind something like the Federal scheme for artists carried out in America during the last five years, though ours would doubtless have to be on a less ambitious scale… it would have a wonderful effect on English art in general.”

Approach to Pittville Park, Cheltenham, Phyllis Ginger

Within a few weeks he had the go-ahead but of course no funds, so like everyone in this situation he looked for sponsors or grants and made an approach to the Pilgrim Trust. His “Scheme for the Recording of Changing Aspects of Britain” asked for £4500 to support “25 to 30 of our best landscape painters” by paying them £5 a week for 6 months.  Landscape painters obviously came fairly cheap!

Melford Hall, Long Melford, Stanley Badmin

The Pilgrim Trust did what most grant awarding bodies do: they offered far less than was asked for. However their £2500 was the seed corn, and the committee chaired by Clark got to work and invited about a dozen artists to submit work. When news got out they were overwhelmed with other enquiries and got down to the serious business of assessing and then selecting artists and matching them to possible subjects. They consulted widely with groups like the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the Georgian Group.

Sudbrooke House, Petersham, George Hooper

Bootham Park, York, Irene Hawkins

Rather surprisingly perhaps, Clark stipulated that works should be in watercolour partly perhaps because he feared for the loss of such a  traditional form of British art during the uncertain conditions of wartime, but more significantly because he argued that while photos capture ‘facts’ paintings capture ‘feeling’.

The Dashwood Mausoleum by Elliott Seabrook

But lest you think he was a Luddite and anti-photography he actually gained another grant from the Pilgrim Trust in 1941 to begin a photographic record of buildings at risk called the National Building Record.

Lightwoods Park, Birmingham, by Richard Young b.1921

Fishbourne and the Downs from Dell Quay, Chichester by Sir William Russell Flint

Already well-established artists including William Russell Flint, Rowland Hilder and John Piper,  were amongst the 63 artists who were eventually commissioned between 1940 and 1943. But the scheme also revealed the hidden talents of a  further 34 “artists barely known or unknown” , like Richard Young and Phyllis Dimond, who ended up having work accepted.

The shelter in Bedford Square by Phyllis Dimond

Clark and the secretary to the committee, Arnold Palmer an experienced arts administrator, where prescient, looking not just at recording landscapes and buildings at  risk of damage from bombing or invasion. Suitable subjects also included landscapes and buildings that were under threat from the changes in agricultural practice needed to boost food production, those likely to be affected by the huge amount of post-war reconstruction that would be needed.

Gateway to Kitchen Court, Eastbury Park, Nr.Blandford, by Arthur Mayger

Alongside these were parish churches, often they said in a poor state of repair but otherwise unchanged for centuries and townscapes where the buildings were not necessarily of outstanding merit themselves but which together gave “a sense of the historical continuity of the English town or village.”

The Dashwood Memorial, John Piper

Finally they included “Country Houses and their Parks” which they thought might “be largely abandoned after the war and which will either fall into disrepair or be converted into lunatic asylums, sanatoriums etc in which case they will be largely surrounded by huts and outbuildings.”  They even gave notes to the artists suggesting their works should be “records showing the elegance and unity of country houses in their last phases, but should have sociological as well as artistic value.”

Hovingham Park and Hovingham Hall, Irene Hawkins

Byland Abbey, from the West, by Michael Rothenstein

In short the 93 artists had the task of painting  scenes which captured a sense of our national identity, through recording both the exceptional and the mundane parts of our landscape and heritage. Herbert Read, the critic, put it like this: they were to give us “the colour and atmosphere of a scene, the intangible genius loci… this intangible element which is so easily destroyed… Better than the wordy rhetoric of journalists or politicians , it shows exactly what we are fighting for – a green and pleasant land, a landscape whose features have been moulded in liberty, whose every winding lane and irregular building is an expression of our national character.”

Cannons Park, Edgware; from the Tennis Courts, by Walter John Bayes

So this was art as propaganda designed to boost patriotic feelings and the national morale as were wartime poster campaigns for  ‘Dig for Victory’  and those depicting idyllic rural scenes with the rousing caption ‘Your Britain fight for it now’.

Your Britain – Fight for it Now   © Imperial War Museum

But Read went on to show that Clark had an even longer term aim: “There will be little point in saving England from the Nazis if we then deliver it to the jerry-builders and the development corporations.”  A sentiment that fits in with the longer term visions of the wartime coalition government that also led to Patrick Abercrombie’s plans for the creation of Green Belts around London and other major urban areas.

The Gateway, Boston Manor Park, Brentford., by archibald standish Hartrick

Doocot at Prestonkirk, East Lothian, William Fraser, Recording Scotland, University of St Andrews.

The name of the project is slightly  misleading since once again there was a conflation of “England” with “Britain”.  Not only didn’t Recording Britain not cover Northern Ireland it only included paintings from 4 counties in Wales.  There was a separate scheme in Scotland.  Recording Scotland had a similar aim: to ‘secure a record of historic scenes, site and buildings (in Scotland) which may be endangered through enemy action or by utilitarian encroachment.’

Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, John Farleigh