Grace Cossington Smith - Second World War

Second World War

As with the First World War, she also depicted the Second World War in various ways. She painted funning pictures showing the arrival of allied troops in France, a dinner with allied leaders at Yalta, and a mass after the war ended in remembrance of the war. Her 1941 painting, Church Interior shows a scene in a church where men are mostly absent, having gone off to the war. A later church scene, Thanksgiving Service, shows a church with the British Union Jack and the Red Ensign in the background, a celebration of the victory in the war after it had finished. Several of her other paintings show large British flags, reflecting not only her own British heritage and patriotism, but also the fact that many Australians still thought of themselves as being part of the British Empire at this time. During the war she served as a warden, which meant she was in charge of getting people out of the houses in Kur-ring-gai Avenue if there was any trouble. She depicted a meeting of wardens in the painting Wardens' Meeting, 1943, which shows a line of people sitting on chairs, looking solemn and possibly chatting quietly. She painted Dawn landing, 1944 which shows troops and a tank disembarking off a ship after the Allied landings in France. An event which marked the beginning of the end of the Nazi occupation of Europe, it was unusual for her to paint a scene of something not directly in front of her. Similarly seeming somewhat at odds with the rest of her work, is the painting of Signing 1945, to depict the signing of the peace treaty at Yalta, which shows seated figures who are vaguely recognisable as the three allied world leaders. This event must have been very important for her to paint it when she almost always painted scenes from in front of her, rather than a scene of people on the other side of the world. She would probably have been relieved that the war was nearly over and was to continue painting for the rest of her life. She was a small lady, only 4-foot-tall (1.2 m), one of the world's smallest artists that we know of.