Ardizzone (Edward). Shelter Scene. Colour lithograph, overall 400 X 300mm,
image 390 X 260mm, London, The National Gallery [1941].
Printed
at the Baynard Press on machine glaze wartime paper. Edges chafed and rubbed,
vertical crease, otherwise image very clean and good. Scarce.
Produced during Ardizzone’s time as
official war artist. The image shows the Tilbury, also captured in Henry
Moore’s work: ‘The most famous, or notorious, of all London’s underground
shelters was found under the Tilbury railway arches at Stepney. Part of a complex of cellars and vaults had
been taken over by the borough council as a public shelter for three thousand
people. The other part was the loading yard of a huge warehouse. The shelter
was famous as a refuge in the raids of the First World War, and people flocked
to it from a wide area. Communists encouraged the shelterers to overflow into the
unofficial part of the arches, where massive steel girders maintained the
illusion of safety. This became the largest, and perhaps the most unspeakable
of all London’s shelters; as many as fourteen or sixteen thousand were
estimated to use it on certain nights ... ‘Tilbury’ became the spearhead of the
agitation for a general improvement in public shelters which journalists and
social workers began to conduct as soon as the Blitz settled in. (Angus Calder
‘The People’s War’ pp.182-83)
