Study: A Balloon Site, Coventry (VIII) by Dame Laura Knight, graphite and watercolour on paper

This compositional study is one of several preparatory drawings by Dame Laura Knight for a painting commissioned by the War Office to encourage recruitment of women to RAF Balloon Command - 'A Balloon Site: Coventry' (1942, Imperial War Museums).

By the Second World War, Knight was a mature, highly respected painter and the first fully elected female Royal Academician since the 18th century. As one of few women to receive Official War Artist commissions, she pursued numerous short-term projects. Following devastating Blitz raids over Coventry, Knight was briefed to encourage ‘the right sort’ of women to enlist as Women’s Auxiliary Air Force balloon operators, and she emphasised the figures’ agility and strength in handling the unwieldy balloon. In her introductory essay for ‘War Pictures by British Artists: Women’ (1943), Knight articulated her interest in the theme of women’s wartime employment, enthusiastically describing their extended professional opportunities. Her account of female balloon operators alludes to the scene of A Balloon Site: Coventry, referencing the women’s strength and, at the same time, their glamour, perhaps to appeal to a range of agile women recruits while eschewing assumptions about required masculine attributes. ‘Here early morning, in one of the three huts, are girls, shapely, radiant with open-air life, tanned faces and forearms a bad match to their shoulders as they step into battle overalls. Venus combs her curls before a scrap of looking-glass propped on a ledge; the upstretched arms can wield a full-sized pick, as a navvy would. The sun streams into the barrel building. Outside, detail of factories is blurred in the mist; steam from a train puffs white on the grey, and tall chimneys trail black smoke. Not always are prospects so pleasing. Come fine, come storm, by day or by night, the Balloon must go up or down, be tended as a living thing, a guardian … Stray strands of hair, golden, red and brown, escape from regulation caps while girls move weights and haul on rope and wire’. Bequest of the artist, 1974. Copyright: the artist's estate and Bridgeman Images / RAF Museum.