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Isobel Atterbury Heath - Two women arc welding

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Isobel Atterbury Heath (1908 - 1989)

Two women arc welding, ‘War 39-46’

SKU: 7023
Signed and inscribed War 39-46
Oil on canvas
20 x 16 in. (51 x 40.5 cm)

Size:
Height – 51cm
Width – 40.5cm

DESCRIPTION

Provenance:
Two women arc welding
Presentation:
framed
Exhibited: WW2 – War Pictures by British Artists, Morley College London, 28 October -23 November 2016, cat 82. 
Literature: WW2 – War Pictures by British Artists, Edited by Sacha Llewellyn & Paul Liss, July 2016, cat 82, page 125.

The two arc welding women wear protective leather aprons and welder’s helmets fitted with a filter shade. They work in separate cubicles to avoid damaging each other’s eyes. The bench-height producction suggest that the women were making steel light fabrications such as containers for munitions. 

During World War II Heath volunteered to work as an artist for Ministry of Information drawing and painting naval subjects and factory workers in Howton’s munitions and camouflage factory at Ives and the Spitfire Fighter Station at Perranporth. She married an Italian Prisoner of War, Dr Marc Prati – a political correspondent for the Italian newspaper La Stampa, who had been interned in Cornwall. 
By 1943 there were 7.25 million women engaged in war-related employment , the majority in agriculture, manufacturing and ciil defence.
Evelyn Dunbar, the only woman to receive a full time salary, was commissioned to produce agricultural and woman subjects’.
Although recording the role of women was one of the stated aims of WAAC as Brian Foss has pointed out the scheme nevertheless favoured images of women performing conventional roles – for instance the predominance of paintings of women as nurses inspite of the fact that in 1943 munitions worker outnumbered nurses by 100 to 1 is noticeable. Like other female War Artists Heath delighted in showing women at work in some of the more unusual roles they performed during the war.
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THE ARTIST

Isobel Atterbury Heath
Isobel Atterbury
Heath
1908 - 1989

Isobel Atterbury Heath studied at the AcadŽ mie Colarossi in Paris
and later Leonard Fuller’s St Ives School of Painting in the 1930s. 

During WWII, she was commissioned by the Ministry of
Information to paint workers in munitions factories and at a
camouflage factory in St Ives, which gave her the opportunity to
showcase how women were employed outside the perceived female
wartime roles of nurses and care-givers. 

She broke away from the STISA to help found the Penwith
Society of Arts in 1949, but resigned in 1950 and rejoined STISA
in 1957, continuing to exhibit with them for the rest of her life.
She also showed with the ROI, the RI and the RSA, and was
included in the 1955 centenary exhibition of the SWA in London.

Go to artist page

MORE PICTURES BY ARTIST

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Isobel Atterbury Heath - Man at a lathe
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Man at a lathe
Isobel Atterbury Heath - A Royal Navy Mine Sweeper in Dry Dock
Isobel Atterbury Heath (1908 - 1989)
A Royal Navy Mine Sweeper in Dry Dock, circa 1940
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Isobel Atterbury Heath - Woman operating a lathe turning the fuse tips of munitions
Isobel Atterbury Heath (1908 - 1989)
Woman operating a lathe turning the fuse tips of munitions, c.1944
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Isobel Atterbury Heath - Two women arc welding
Isobel Atterbury Heath (1908 - 1989)
Two women arc welding, ‘War 39-46’
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