(1906 - 1960)
Evelyn Mary Dunbar, a painter, muralist, illustrator and war artist, was born in Reading, Berkshire. After studying at Rochester School of Art and Chelsea School of Art, she gained a place at the Royal College of Art and graduated in 1933. In April 1940, Dunbar was appointed by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (the official scheme of the British government, established for artists to record both the First and Second World Wars) as an official war artist. She is best known for her work recording the civilian contributions to the war effort, in particular the work of the women, training and learning new skills on the home front. Dunbar was the only woman artist to receive continual employment from the scheme throughout the Second World War. After the War, Dunbar held teaching positions at the Oxford School of Art and was a visiting teacher at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. Portraiture and landscapes of Kent, where she was living, make up much of her work throughout the 1950s, as well as some important allegorical works, such as 'Autumn and the Poet' (1960). Dunbar exhibited rarely during her life, but following the rediscovery of many of her paintings from this post-War period, her work is being reappraised and the first major solo exhibitions of her work, Evelyn Dunbar: The Lost Works, was held at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester in 2016.
