Evelyn Dunbar - Pre-war Painting

Pre-war Painting

(Unless otherwise stated, all paintings referred to are in oil on canvas)

At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 Dunbar, then 32, was at a crossroads. Concurrently with the Brockley murals and her other projects she had continued to paint and to exhibit, invariably in group exhibitions. Exhibitions to which she contributed were mostly at a local level in the Medway towns, occasionally within the RCA and sometimes under the sponsorship of London galleries. In the spring of 1938 she contributed four paintings to an exhibition entitled 'Cross-section of English Painting' at Wildenstein & Co., of New Bond St, London. The two most significant were An English Calendar, a 6' (1.83m) square divided into 25 compartments, 12 of which feature monthly and seasonal gardening scenes reminiscent of her Gardener's Diary illustrations, now at Withersdane, Wye College, Kent; and Winter Garden (approx. 1' x 3': 30 x 91 cm: Tate Britain). Winter Garden, which dates from 1929, shows the Dunbar garden at Rochester, with the family house in the distance featuring a modest tower at the top of which Dunbar had her studio.

In late 1938 Dunbar opened what she called The Blue Gallery, a large first-floor room above the shop run by her sisters Marjorie and Jessie at 168 High Street, Rochester. Here she displayed her own work and included some of her mother's floral still-life paintings. She invited friends and acquaintances, among them Charles Mahoney and prominent contemporary artists Allan Gwynne-Jones, Barnett Freedman and Edward Bawden, to contribute their work to her first group exhibition, which opened in March 1939. The Blue Gallery did not prosper and it closed after a few months.