29 Facts About Evelyn Dunbar

Evelyn Mary Dunbar was a British artist, illustrator and teacher.

Evelyn Dunbar is notable for recording women's contributions to World War II on the United Kingdom home front, particularly the work of the Women's Land Army.

Evelyn Dunbar was the only woman working for the War Artists' Advisory Committee on a full-time salaried basis.

Evelyn Dunbar was modest regarding her achievements and outside of the post-war mainstream art world which has led to some neglect of her work until recent years.

Evelyn Dunbar painted murals at Brockley County Secondary School, and was a member of the Society of Mural Painters.

Evelyn Dunbar attempted a return to mural painting in 1958 with a commission at Bletchley Park Teacher Training College, but was unable to fulfil the original specification.

Evelyn Dunbar was born in Reading, Berkshire, the fifth and youngest child of William and Florence Evelyn Dunbar.

Florence Evelyn Dunbar, a Yorkshirewoman, was a keen gardener and amateur still-life artist.

Evelyn Dunbar was a Christian Scientist and Evelyn Dunbar was to remain a Christian Scientist throughout her life.

Evelyn Dunbar studied at Rochester School of Art from 1925 to 1927, at Chelsea School of Art from 1927 to 1929.

Mahoney painted two panels and part of the gallery ceiling, while Evelyn Dunbar undertook the remaining north side panel, the frieze, a lunette, 22 of the 24 spandrels and four roundels on the central ceiling.

Subjects for these smaller areas included Minerva and the Olive Tree, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, while the subject for Evelyn Dunbar's panel was The Country Girl and the Pail of Milk.

Country Life magazine commissioned Evelyn Dunbar to compose their Gardener's Diary 1938, a monthly journal and appointments book with literary texts chosen by Evelyn Dunbar and illustrated with her pen and ink drawings.

In 1941 Evelyn Dunbar provided the pen-and-ink illustrations for A Book of Farmcraft by Michael Greenhill.

Many of Evelyn Dunbar's illustrations, contrasting the right way of undertaking some agricultural tasks with the wrong way, were made at Sparsholt, using recruits as her models.

In late 1938 Evelyn Dunbar opened The Blue Gallery, a large first-floor room above the shop run by her sisters Marjorie and Jessie at 168 High Street, Rochester.

Evelyn Dunbar invited Charles Mahoney and prominent contemporary artists Allan Gwynne-Jones, Barnett Freedman and Edward Bawden, to contribute their work to her first group exhibition, which opened in March 1939.

Evelyn Dunbar's brief was to record civilian contributions to the war effort on the home front.

Evelyn Dunbar herself looks out of the painting, which was started in the spring of 1942 but not completed until 1944.

The model for the Land Girl was her sister Jessie, who, although she modelled several times for Evelyn Dunbar, is never seen full-face because of an eye disfigurement.

Evelyn Dunbar had sketched the dawn sky, for eventual inclusion in a painting, many years before in Kent.

The corn stooks are strongly reminiscent of the stooks in Evelyn Dunbar's earlier painting, Men Stooking and Girls Learning to Stook.

In 1946 Evelyn Dunbar was appointed to a part-time teaching post at the Oxford School of Art, as well as becoming a visiting teacher at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.

At Enstone Evelyn Dunbar completed her second portrait of her husband, which Folley renamed The Cerebrant when he presented it to Manchester Art Gallery in 2005.

Evelyn Dunbar now had the time to devote herself to landscapes of her beloved Wealden countryside.

Evelyn Dunbar made something of a speciality of children's portraits in the years between 1954 and 1960.

Folley remarried in 1961, and in the interim Evelyn Dunbar's remaining work was distributed among family and friends.

Evelyn Dunbar worked continually, and there is nothing to suggest that at any time in her career did her output slacken, except for brief holiday periods, and even then, it was impossible for her to leave her sketch-book behind.

The Pallant House Gallery in Chichester mounted an exhibition of the newly discovered pieces and other works, Evelyn Dunbar: The Lost Works, from October 2015 to February 2016.