Portrait of a Hero
John Greeves on wartime artist Elva Blacker
IN the annals of official war artists, you won’t come across the name Elva Blacker. Though never commissioned, her drawings and paintings made at RAF Biggin Hill, London, and RAF Manston, Kent, constitute the largest body of art illustrating RAF station life ever undertaken. Consisting of over 1,000 portraits and sketches, they have since been heralded by the RAF as “an unrivalled record.”
“It’s the largest collection of its kind, greater in number than any commissioned war artist and captures a period of three years, not just through one or two paintings but through a timeline of personnel she encountered at Biggin Hill,” says Rebecca Jones, Elva’s great-niece. Enormously proud of Elva’s accomplishments, Rebecca is determined to highlight the artwork’s importance.
When World War II broke out Elva drove vehicles for the Blood Transfusion Service until 1942 when she was called up at the age of 34. She joined the WAAF as an
Aircraftwoman and became a Motor Transport Driver. It sounds as if she was fearless in an emergency:
“During her lifetime she owned several motorbikes and had a reputation for being terrifying on the road,” Rebecca laughs. Elva was then posted to Fighter Command Biggin Hill where she drove ambulances, until she became the personal driver to the Chief Intelligence Officer.
Unlike commissioned war artists of the period such as Laura Knight, Elva’s compositions aren’t staged, but record life as it happened. She was first asked to paint vehicle number plates at Biggin Hill before her real talent was discovered. Gaining ready access to the sick quarters, crew rooms, operation room and debriefing sessions, Elva captured in a few war-torn years over a thousand service personnel on and off operational duty.
“Bohemian, eccentric, free spirited, philanthropic, kind and spiritual. She was also a very binary person, excruciatingly shy, but with the right people she was comfortable, absolutely flamboyant, bonkers and full of fun,” says Rebecca. According to the other WAAFs who served with her, Elva was always sketching. She picked subjects ranging from RAF ground crew, transport drivers, chaplains, operations rooms and aircrew, many of whom were from overseas: Australia, South Africa, Canada, Poland, Czechoslovakia, as well as pilots from the Free French Airforce. Tragically, several of her portraits remained incomplete – many never returned from their missions.
Among her numerous individual portraits is Squadron Leader Alan Deere DSO, DFC and Bar, a New Zealand fighter ace who was credited with the destruction of 22 enemy aircraft, as well as Commandant René Mouchotte DFC, a revered pilot of the Free French Airforce. He, along with Edward “Jack” Charles, shared the 999th and 1,000th kill for the Biggin Hill Wing. The 1,000th enemy
aeroplane was a significant prize and the pilots agreed to share the honour. It was marked by a huge party at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, with Churchill and de Gaulle in attendance.
Despite wartime shortages including paper rationing, Elva was able to work in a range of media, never limiting herself, and using whatever came to hand. Her enormous output included watercolours, oils on board and canvas, and sketches drawn in ink, often refined and subtle in technique. She could produce delicate and precise studies having been a successful miniaturist before the war, painting notable figures such as George Bernard Shaw. Her wartime ink portraits, however, took on another dimension, often with detailed features, like the eyes, accompanied by much looser and nebulous strokes to demark clothing and background.
One of her paintings, a study of pilots at a debriefing session at Biggin Hill, was included in an RAF exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 1943, where it was viewed by the late Queen Mother who is known to have talked to the artist. Group studies were not an uncommon theme for her, offering an insight into the workings of an RAF communications room, or showing how her fellow drivers relaxed in the motor transport rest room.
“Elva used her art as a social lubricant,” says Rebecca. In one letter Elva confessed her dread of socialising, admitting: “Instead of going to the pub, I would wend my way to whichever section I was currently painting.” Art was a release which enabled her to relax and speak freely with her subjects.
Even before the war, circumstances had conspired to try and dictate the course of her life. Born in 1908, she was forbidden to pursue her ambition to become a professional artist by her parents William and Clara Blacker. William ran a very successful photographic studio in Sutton and the family later moved to a five-bedroom house in an upmarket residential area. Contrastingly, everything was done to ensure her brothers Maurice and Kenneth Anthony (Tony) attended university. When Elva left school at 16, she was sent to the London’s Regent Street Polytechnic to study photography before entering the family business.
Still Elva never gave up on her dream and for six years attended evening classes at the Sutton and Cheam School of Arts and Crafts while taking on increasing responsibility for the business. Only after her father and mother died was she able to become a full-time student at the Slade School of Art in 1936 to 1939. It was, of course, unfortunate timing – just before she could launch into her longed-for life as an artist, war duty beckoned.
In 1944 Elva was posted to RAF Manston. She worked in No. 6091 Servicing Echelon which provided ground support for No. 91 Squadron flying Spitfires, continuing to sketch and paint the pilots. When peace was finally declared, she worked as an Educational and Vocational Training (EVT) instructor helping service personnel re-enter civilian life before she was demobbed on 28 May, 1946, with the rank of Sergeant.
The end of the war marked a new beginning. Turning to theatrical
subjects (including Dame Sybil Thorndike, Wilfred Pickles, Dirk Bogarde, Kenneth More and Dandy Nichols), much of her work was exhibited throughout her life.
Those wartime paintings, however, lay dormant for 30 years and it was only a chance encounter that thankfully brought them to light. Kept in a cupboard under the stairs, Elva showed the collection to retired Colonel S.H. Woods in 1975, whom she had met on a sketching holiday. He had the nous to write to the RAF Museum who instantly recognised the immense significance of the works, acquiring them for posterity.
In her mid-forties, Elva developed a passion for travel, visiting Canada and the USA, painting portraits of animals to generate income. In 1957 she went to Bombay (Mumbai) to attend a Vegetarian Congress and didn’t return for two and a half years, touring India on a motorbike as she painted, living from hand to mouth. She became a “free spirit” and far more accepting of herself. On a trip to the Far East she was invited to stay with the newly elected King of Malay, Tuanku Abdul Rahman, to paint his portrait before she returned to India.
Elva took a great interest in other people and humanitarian issues, becoming Sutton’s Vice President of the Soroptimist Movement, a global body that helped raise money for causes such as Save the Children. She never married, but found love late in life with a General Monroe – Rebecca is anxious to find out more about him.
The wartime collection is now in the RAF archive awaiting the huge task of digitalisation which hopefully will lead to identifying many unknown pilots and connecting them once again with their families. Rebecca herself is in the process of organising a mobile exhibition of Elva’s work and writing a book on her great aunt. Unlike Beryl Williams’s book As We Were, which detailed Elva’s war years, Rebecca’s future biography Chasing Elva will cover every aspect of the artist’s fascinating life.
Fittingly, at Biggin Hill Memorial Museum one of Elva’s paintings is already on permanent display. Depicting the station’s original chapel, it also features a semi-complete painting of two pilots on the reverse of the canvas. Specially mounted so both sides could be viewed, visitors were invited to identify the pilots. Amazingly, during the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Britain in September 1990, and with further help from the Canadian Fighter Pilots Association, they were finally recognised as Canadian Squadron Leader Wally Conrad and Wing Commander Buck McNair.
“There was so much interest to find out who the two missing pilots were – did they survive, did they go on to have happy lives? And thankfully they did in this instance,” says Museum Director Katie Edwards. “The 50th anniversary was such a poignant time for the mystery to be solved.” Plans are also afoot for a major exhibition of Elva’s works at the museum: “She made a huge contribution to our understanding of station life and what life meant then – it is so important to us now to be able to tell these stories through her artwork.”
Sadly Elva died alone in 1984 but her character still resonates through her art. “She was an eclectic character with an eclectic skill set,” Rebecca summarises proudly. “If people just saw her work, they’d soon recognise it as something very special.”
View more of Elva’s work at chasingelva.com. Biggin Hill Memorial Museum, Main Road, Kent TN16 3EJ; 01959 422414; bhmm.org. uk; RAF Museum London, Grahame Park Way, London NW9 5LL; 020 8205 2266; rafmuseum.org.uk