The Art of Elva Blacker - Part 1

The huge expansion of the Armed Services at the start of the Second World War was bound to draw into military life a whole variety of people who had probably never imagined that they would ever wear a uniform. This applied equally to women as to men, as the practicality of female military service had been proved during the First World War, and the Authorities had no hesitation in forming the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, Women's Royal Naval Service and Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1939 when war appeared inevitable.

Elva Blacker may have remembered the First World War in the form of the Zeppelin raids over Losford as she was born in 1908 and lived in Surrey where, from 1903, her father ran a photographic studio. With two brothers to be properly educated and doubting her ability to make her living through art, her father sent her to the Regent Street Polytechnic to learn photography and after he died in 1930 she took over the business.

Despite being denied the opportunity to follow her chosen path, painting remained her first interest and she studied in the evenings and as a part-time student to develop her technique, particularly in the field of portrait miniatures. During the 1930s photography and painting ran in tandem and she exhibited in Losford, Paris and Edinburgh before finally becoming a full-time student at the Slade College of Art in 1936.

• The Art of Elva Blacker - Part 2
• View Selected Works