Evelyn Dunbar - War and Country
Part 6: Later Years - The Bletchley Murals
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| Alpha, one of the Bletchley Murals, courtesy Oxford Brookes University. |
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In December 1946 Dunbar obtained a part time teaching post at the Oxford School of Art. Some three years later she began teaching at the Ruskin School of Drawing and of Fine Art, Oxford. In the summer of 1951 Evelyn and Roger moved to Wye, Kent when Roger took up an appointment at Wye College of Agriculture. Evelyn continued as a visiting teacher at the Ruskin, working alongside such distinguished artists as Muirhead Bone, John Piper and Kenneth Rowntree.
Dunbar was commissioned in 1956 by the principal of Bletchley Park Teacher Training College to paint two murals to be placed in the Library. Dunbar was left free to make her own interpretation of the College’s emblem the horn and the alpha within the omega - a reference to the College motto ‘In my end is my beginning’.
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| Autumn and the Poet, oil on canvas, 1948 - 1959, private collection. |
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These ‘murals’ are significant with regard to Dunbar’s work and her concern with human experiences as they capture something of her Christian Science beliefs. The Alpha combined with Omega signifies completeness, so God is the Alpha and the Omega, ‘the first and the last, the beginning and the end’. Dunbar’s favourite work Autumn and the Poet, was finished in her studio near Wye and is her greatest and most significant allegorical work.
Evelyn Dunbar died suddenly while out walking with her husband on 12th May 1960. The fact that she did not seek publicity, was modest about her achievements and did not see herself as part of a clique has contributed to the neglect of her work. Like many other war artists she tended to fall out of sight of the mainstream, modernist art world after 1945. This exhibition demonstrates that Evelyn Dunbar did much to add to the “practice and spirit of English art” (Geoffrey Grigson, 1941).
Part 1: The Early Years and the Developing Artist
Part 2: The Brockley Murals
Part 3: Country and Garden
Part 4: War Artist - Recording the Women's Land Army
Part 5: War Artist - Recording the Home Front
Part 6: Later Years - The Bletchley Murals
"Evelyn Dunbar: War and Country" by Dr Gill Clarke is available from the St. Barbe Museum Book Shop. Click here for a review.
© Dr Gill Clarke 2006. Copyright notice
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