To celebrate International Women’s Day, 2024, Liss Llewellyn is delighted to present a special online exhibition: Women at War.

This exhibition gathers together images of women, by women, and pays testament to the crucial roles they performed during wartime. There are scenes of the Women’s Land Army – who made a significant contribution to Britain’s food production – as well as the Canal Girls of Evan Charlton’s watercolour, who ferried vital wartime supplies through the country’s waterway network, while saving on petrol, rubber, and rolling stock.

Yet of all the jobs that women took on during the war, their work in munitions factories was probably the most urgent, as they produced the bullets and shells for the British Army. This exhibition shines a light on this often overlooked, dangerous aspect of women’s activity, from the factory workers that Isobel Heath painted for the Ministry of Information, to the heroic ‘Munitionette’ of Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro’s woodcut. Lastly, the exhibition also includes images made from the frontline, such as the lithographs that Olive Mudie-Cooke produced as a Voluntary Aid Detachment driver in France, or Ethel Gabain’s portrait of Pauline Gower from the Air Transport Auxiliary, who flew Lancaster Bombers from factories to war zones.