Building Speedboats

Roland Vivian Pitchforth (1895 - 1982)

Oil on board

1943

Share this:

License this image

Start Zooming
  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Government Art Collection
    Roland Pitchforth’s painting, ‘Building Speedboats’ shows three men dressed in overalls working assiduously beneath the red hull of a boat under construction. One man, seated on a box, drills the side of the hull, while his companions crouch down awkwardly in the space. Shavings of red paint curl at their feet. Their identical upturned round faces and slicked back hair gives each figure a strange artificial appearance, as if they were dolls or puppets. The theatricality of the scene is heightened by the fall of light from the naked bulb on the floor, elongating the men’s shadows to create a dramatic depiction of a routine wartime activity.

    Working as an Official War Artist during the Second World War, Pitchforth produced a range of work at numerous postings including at the Ministries of Information and Home Security. Stationed in Plymouth in 1941, he observed and recorded the activities of RAF Mount Batten and the city’s boat yards and factories. A year later, he began producing a series of work depicting underground control rooms. 'Building Speedboats’ is one of several works made in 1943, while the artist was assigned to the Admiralty. In the final year of the war, Pitchforth was sent to the Far East where he witnessed the culmination of the Burma campaign. Several of his watercolours and paintings, along with works by other Official War Artists, were allocated to the Government Art Collection in 1946 by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee.

  • About the artist
    Roland Vivian Pitchforth was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire and studied there and in Leeds up to 1915. After the First World War, he returned to Leeds, then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art (RCA, 1921–1925). Until 1939 he taught at Camberwell and Clapham Schools of Art and the RCA. He joined the London Artists' Association and the London Group in the late 1920s. As an Official War Artist in the Second World War, Pitchforth worked for the Ministry of Information and Home Security, drawing RAF activities, boat yards, factories, control rooms and tanks. He witnessed the Burma campaign in the Far East in 1945, then briefly lived in South Africa. On his return, he taught art and became a Royal Academician (1953).
  • Explore
    Places
    Subjects
    boat-builder, crate, drill, saw, WW2 art, genre, man, 20th century costume, overalls, World War II, speedboat
    Materials & Techniques
    board, oil, oil painting
  • Details
    Artist
    Roland Vivian Pitchforth (1895 - 1982)
    Title
    Building Speedboats
    Date
    1943
    Medium
    Oil on board
    Dimensions
    height: 56.00 cm, width: 76.00 cm
    Acquisition
    Presented via the Imperial War Museum, War Artists' Advisory Committee, April 1946
    Inscription
    BR: Pitchforth
    GAC number
    426