Battle lines | 17 September 2011

The introductory room to Women War Artists at the Imperial War Museum confronts the visitor with a large canvas of a women’s canteen in 1918 by the little-known Flora Lion. It’s an honest painting, workmanlike but dull. Hanging to its left is Laura Knight’s famous ‘Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech-ring’ (1943), and in between is a monitor playing a wonderful film clip of Dame Laura and Ruby going to see the painting at the Royal Academy. Ruby, overcome by emotion, kisses Dame Laura; Dame Laura bobs about, smoking furiously. Of course, Laura Knight on film and in paint grabs the attention; Flora Lion is inevitably sidelined. And that sets the tenor of the show, which is rather a shame, as there is work of real interest among the more obscure names.

There are also low art, illustrational things, such as a couple of slightly caricatural drawings, of a woman window-dresser and a bus conductress, by Victoria Monkhouse.