Stella Bowen: Bombing up a Lancaster for Wing Commander Douglas

• Exhibition
• Education material
• Curators talks

• Periods:
• To England
• An artist's journey
• Inner worlds
• The return to England
• The war years

Period: The war years

Stella Bowen arrived at her first assignment as an official war artist, the RAF station at Binbrook in Lincolnshire, feeling distinctly awkward in her new uniform. This was the home of 460 Squadron, the oldest Australian squadron in Bomber Command and one of the most decorated. It suffered the highest losses of any Australian squadron, with over 900 of its aircrew having been killed.

Bowen saw the Lancaster as “a most sinister looking thing – like a terrifying insect, full of eggs”. To heighten the impact of this weapon of war, Bowen juxtaposed it against a tranquil English landscape.

The figure calmly observing the Lancaster being loaded is Wing Commander John Keith Douglas, DFC. In May 1944 he became, at age 22, the youngest RAAF officer to command a bomber squadron. He was killed during a bombing raid over Germany in February 1945.

Paintings

• Julia
• The house opposite
• Flight from reason
• Embankment gardens
• Admiral Sir Ragnar Colvin
• Bomber crew
• Bombing up a Lancaster for Wing Commander Douglas
• Remains of a flying bomb
• Group Captain Hughie Edwards
• D-Day, 0300 hours, interrogation hut
• Flying Officer Frederick Syme, Sunderland captain
• Pilot Officer Ronald Warfield
• A Sunderland crew comes ashore at Pembroke Dock (F. Syme, Ron Warfield, Ron Tyson, Eric Genders, Charlie Martin, Spud Murphy, Bob Meade, Merv Pike, Jock Beattie, Curly Rowland and John Bishop)
• At the Churchill Club, large and small worlds
• RAAF airmen at Mongewell Park Medical Rehabilitation Unit
• Private, Gowrie House
• Repatriated prisoner of war is processed
• Brigadier George Langley
• Reception desk at Gowrie House, Eastbourne
• Theaden in Kensington
• [Flowers in a green Norwegian pot]