Shared Experience: Bomber crew
Given the task of painting a typical Lancaster bomber crew, Bowen travelled to RAF Station Binbrook in Lincolnshire, where No. 460 Squadron RAAF was based. The men seemed preoccupied with their coming operation and showed little interest in her drawings. Next day they were reported missing and presumed killed: only one survived. Bowen completed the group portrait from sketches and official photographs: “It was horrible having to paint the picture after the men were lost. Like painting ghosts.”
Paintings
- Bomber crew
Stella Bowen - Battlefield burial of three NCOs
Ivor Hele - Tragic Landscape
Alex Colville - Japanese dead from suicide raid, Labuan
Donald Friend - A Child Bomb-Victim Receiving Penecillin Treatment
Ethel Gabain - Natives carrying wounded
Sali Herman - A Saline Bath, RAF Hospital
A.R. Thomson - Face Burns, Sgt James F. Gourley, RAF, 536215
Charles Goldhamer - Bombed Out
Will Ogilvie - Wrecked Lodestar
Eric Thake - Bomber crash
Frank Hinder