Reader Story
Rebecca Blacker Jones is fascinated with her great aunt Elva, who recorded significant moments in history as an artist during the Second World War. Gail Dixon discovers more about this strong, bohemian woman who created such an important legacy
Rebecca Blacker Jones is fascinated with her great aunt who painted the unsung heroes of the Battle of Britain
On a spring day in 1985 a young Rebecca Blacker Jones entered the Aladdin’s cave that was her great aunt Elva’s home. The eerie Victorian house in Sutton, South London, had been uninhabited for months. Moth-ridden curtains drifted on the breeze, and pigeons lived in one of the bedrooms.
Rebecca and her sister Pip found a glass room that was a chaos of weeds, dust and cobwebs. It was also filled with pots of paint, brushes and pencils, all left to hand, as if their owner had just stepped out of the room.
Elva Blacker was a renowned artist whose career spanned many decades. She created her most important work during wartime, when she painted behind-thescenes images of Royal Air Force servicemen and women. She captured a unique time in British history, in all of its intensity.
In recent years, Rebecca has become fascinated with her great aunt’s life story and achievements. “I never met Elva, but that visit became a marked moment in my childhood,” Rebecca explains.
“Elva had died a year earlier, and the house remained vacant. Her main living area downstairs was an intriguing museum of Blacker family life, packed with furniture and artefacts as well as her easel, brushes and paints.”
Two years ago, Rebecca and her mother Julia found boxes in the attic that her late father General Sir Jeremy Blacker had kept safe. “They were full of Elva’s life and contained letters, keepsakes and old-fashioned photograph albums. This spurred me on to discover more about her and to keep her memory alive.”
Elva was born in Sutton in 1908, the daughter of a well-todo photographer William Blacker and his wife Clara. Thanks to William’s profession, Rebecca owns many photographs of Elva as a child – with her cherubic face and long dark curls, she made the perfect model. Indeed William sold photos of her as postcards.
Despite being born into a middle-class family with many opportunities, Elva was to face a number of obstacles in the pursuit of her dreams. During the early to mid20th century, Britain was still a very patriarchal society and inequalities existed everywhere. Elva had an independent spirit, and Jeremy remembered her as someone born before her time.
She had two brothers Maurice and Kenneth, who was Rebecca’s grandfather. “They were very
‘I wanted to discover more about her and to keep her memory alive’