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Eric Ravilious, HMS Glorious in the Arctic, 1940 (Imperial War Museum)
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Brightly lit by the midnight sun, aeroplanes swoop and soar around the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious, circling like Arctic terns against the incandescent sky. But if the treatment of the aircraft is playful, the jagged white light that cuts across the surface of the water adds urgency to the painting, reminding us that the ship is camouflaged for a purpose.
Ravilious left Scapa Flow for the second time on 31 May, as HMS Highlander again escorted HMS Glorious to Norway. The German invasion of France had rendered the Norwegian campaign irrelevant and on 4 June a general evacuation of Allied forces began. On the night of 7/8 June a squadron of Hawker Hurricanes flew from their Norwegian base to Glorious, where all eight planes landed successfully – the first time this particular model had achieved such a feat. This painting shows the Hurricanes – and the Gloster Gladiators whose pilots had shown such bravery during the campaign – circling the carrier as they prepare to land, completing a daring escape.
Then, in the early hours of 8 June, Captain Guy D’Oyly-Hughes, commander of HMS Glorious, was granted permission – under circumstances that remain mysterious - to leave the convoy and go on ahead to Scapa Flow. This time HMS Highlander stayed behind with the carrier Ark Royal, while the destroyers HMS Acasta and HMS Ardent accompanied Glorious. That evening the German cruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst sighted the three ships, and a direct hit from Scharnhorst immediately put the carrier’s flight deck out of action. With no protection from the air the British ships were outgunned and, after a furious bombardment, all three were sunk, with the eventual loss of 1,519 men.
‘We have been very lucky,’ wrote Ravilious to (his wife) Tirzah on 10 June, while still at sea.
Such was the scale of the disaster that Neville Chamberlain was forced to resign, and Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. Nazi propagandists lost no time in releasing an eyewitness account that described the carrier’s last moments: ‘Slowly the giant began to turn on her side. Pouring out flames and smoke she drifted with the wind. A moment later she sank.’
A month later the first exhibition of war art opened at the National Gallery, with this painting among a considerable number of works by Ravilious. A critic in The Times suggested that the artist was overly preoccupied with capturing the effects of light in Norway, the implication being perhaps that he had failed to convey the full drama of the situation. Others, notably Kenneth Clark, greatly admired the Norwegian watercolours, and today this luminous painting serves as a fitting memorial to HMS Glorious and the men who died with her.
This is an extract from Ravilious in Pictures: The War Paintings, published by The Mainstone Press.
HMS Glorious in the Arctic is currently on show at The Arc, Winchester, in the exhibition Extraordinary Everyday: The Art and Design of Eric Ravilious.
At 7.30pm on 7 March 2022 I'll be zooming my lecture Laughter and Loss: British Artist in World War Two to raise funds for the Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal. Info and tickets are here.