War Artists' Advisory Committee

Clark also led the Pilgrim Trust's Recording Britain watercolour scheme which was devised as a pictorial Domesday Book of British life before an anticipated German invasion.

The primary purpose of the committee was officially propaganda and keeping up public morale with art exhibitions, which were staged at the National Gallery.

Showing British war art in North America during 1941 was aimed at persuading the United States to lend economic and military support to Britain at a time of American neutrality.

[4] The WAAC met at the National Gallery once a month, with members drawn from government departments, the forces and London art schools.

[8] Three artists, Thomas Hennell, Eric Ravilious and Albert Richards, were killed during the Second World War whilst working on WAAC commissions.

[11] Attempts by the committee to produce more extensive and higher quality publications fell foul of war-time printing restrictions and rationing.

For example, the twenty-seven drawings by Henry Moore of coal mines and the London Underground shelters went to eleven different museums and galleries while the hundred or so works by Graham Sutherland were placed with thirty different institutions.

Over half the collection, some 3,000 items, was acquired by the Imperial War Museum, while the Tate took seventy-six pieces and the British Council some twenty-five works.