Threshing, Kent
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About the work
- Location
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Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, 1-19 Victoria Street
Wielding pitchforks, men, women and children thresh corn in this rural scene by Evelyn Mary Dunbar. The horizontal composition captures the foreground activity and the fields stretching beyond and the cloudy sky. Long blue shadows cast by the figures on to the yellow corn suggest this is late afternoon. Dressed in headscarves, goggles and khaki-coloured overalls, the women are ‘Land Girls’ or members of The Women’s Land Army (WLA).
Dunbar painted ‘Threshing’ between 1942 and 1943, at the height of the Second World War. The only woman commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, she recorded aspects of women’s work on the Home Front. Before the War, the Government instigated a nationwide plan to grow more food in Britain, which involved civilian help on farms. The WLA formed in 1939 with women assuming many agricultural jobs that would have formerly been undertaken by men who were now serving in the War. ‘Threshing’ shows women and children working alongside older farmers and labourers, whose age prevented them from doing National Service. As a result, Dunbar’s painting is an important record of a vital rural activity that united the community at a time of national emergency.
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Explore
- Subjects
- threshing, pitchfork, farmer/farm labourer, WW2 art, genre, boy, man, woman, 20th century costume, coat, child, knife, World War II, field
- Materials & Techniques
- canvas, oil, oil painting
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Details
- Title
- Threshing, Kent
- Date
- c1942-1943
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- height: 31.00 cm, width: 77.00 cm
- Acquisition
- Presented via the Imperial War Museum, War Artists' Advisory Committee, April 1946
- Inscription
- br: E. Dunbar
- GAC number
- 139