- Artist
- Eric Ravilious 1903–1942
- Medium
- Watercolour and graphite on paper
- Dimensions
- Support: 470 × 591 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946
- Reference
- N05723
Catalogue entry
N05723 MIDNIGHT SUN 1940
Inscr. ‘Eric Ravilious June 1940’ b.l.
Watercolour, 18 1/2×23 1/4 (47×59).
Presented by the War Artists' Advisory Committee 1946.
Exh: National War Pictures, National Gallery, 1940, and provincial tour, 1941 (no catalogue); National War Pictures, R.A., October–November 1945 (589), and Glasgow, 1945; Eastbourne and Brighton, 1948 (37); Sheffield, February–March 1958 (14).
Repr:
V. & A., Twentieth Century British Water-Colours, 1958, pl.37.
This picture was painted in June 1940 on the second of two trips in a destroyer which Ravilious made to Norway. The Imperial War Museum possesses a watercolour ‘H.M.S. Glorious in the Arctic’ and two watercolours entitled ‘H.M.S. Ark Royal in action’. The Ark Royal watercolours are each dated 9 June 1940. It is not clear which aircraft-carrier is shown in ‘Midnight Sun’, but it is a reasonable assumption that it is either H.M.S. Glorius or H.M.S. Ark Royal; the date makes the latter more likely.
Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II
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