It is appropriate that the central collection of the MOD should contain works of art depicting both twentieth century world wars. Activity during the 1939-45 war is widely represented, and again the concentration is on naval activity rather than on land campaigns.
The works of the War artists were presented to the Admiralty and to the War Office in 1946 by the War Artists Advisory Committee. The works of art shown here are all on display in various conference rooms and senior offices around Whitehall.
In June 1944, the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC) sent many of its artists to France, to witness and record first hand D-Day and the Normandy invasion. After painting images of the preparation for invasion in Allied bases in England Thomas Hennell arrived in Normandy on 16 June, just as the Allied breakout from the coast began.
Calais, the scene of so much bombardment, was especially badly damaged. Hennell was particularly affected by the desolation of the area surrounding the church, while the Phare - the lighthouse, on the left of the picture, remained standing in spite of substantial damage from continued shelling. Hennell said "…there is a real splendour about fresh battlefields which quickly fades."
The breakout lasted well into August, with vicious and desperate fighting leaving devastation all across the French summer countryside. Following the Allies sometimes only a few miles behind the front line Hennell recorded the aftermath of the towns caught in the wake of destruction. He painted images such as the captured V-bomb launch sites, German coastal defences, Pegasus Bridge and several scenes around Nijmegen.
In Burma Hennell painted scenes of the liberated British soldiers and their prison camps. At the end of the war he stayed on with friends in Indonesia, where he was caught up in the Indonesian uprising against the Dutch.
In November 1945 Thomas Hennell was officially reported missing. There were reports that he was mistaken for Dutch and held hostage before being killed by hostile Indonesians in the jungle but nothing was substantiated; in death, as in life, this artist remained enigmatic.