Official art has a bad name, yet the pictures commissioned in Britain to record the two world wars were often as good, or better, than anything else the artists did. The paintings Stanley Spencer based on his memories of service in the First War - represented in the exhibition at Tate Britain by his picture of a field dressing station in Salonika - and those commissioned in 1940 showing shipyard workers are not just the-thing-I-wanted-to-do-anyway given a public outing, but art successfully attending on, or at least consonant with, public feeling.

When approached as a potential War Artist Spencer suggested a Crucifixion in homage to the sufferings of Poland. The cautious commissioners rejected that, but let him have a go at shipbuilding. They were right to prefer him in that vein. The welders and cutters, each lit by his torch, are knitted into compositions in which a purposeful confusion of cut steel sets up a geometry which is counterpointed by the figures - men crouching in odd, work-induced poses. These pictures, monumental in organisation and mundane in detail, are proper tributes to the effort of everyday life.

LRB 19 April 2001 | PDF Download