Coventry, November 1940

On the advice of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee John Piper was, in April 1940, commissioned by the Ministry of Information to produce a collection of war-related works. After an initial struggle to find appropriate subject-matter, Kenneth Clark suggested that Piper might consider tackling buildings which had been damaged or destroyed by enemy action. During the night of 14-15 November 1940 the city of Coventry was extensively damaged by a large-scale bombing raid. 568 people lost their lives and most of the city centre, including the cathedral, was destroyed by fire. Piper arrived on the scene on the morning of 15 November and his personal recollections of the experience were published at the time: these are now accessible in Frances Spalding, John Piper - Myfanwy Piper, Lives in Art (Oxford, 2009, p. 180) and David Fraser Jenkins, John Piper, The Forties (Philip Wilson/Imperial War Museum, 2000, p. 33). Piper found the ruined cathedral ‘a grey, meal-coloured stack; … redder as one came nearer, and still hot and wet from fire and water; finally presenting itself as a series of gaunt, red-grey facades … Windows empty, but for oddly poised fragments of tracery, with spikes of blackened glass embedded in them’. Piper made notes and sketches and took photographs of what he saw. One of the artist’s best known and most important paintings was the result: the iconic, full-sized painting Coventry Cathedral, 15 November 1940 (collection of Manchester City Art Gallery), for which the current lot is a small-scale oil study. An image of it was soon made into a postcard ‘which sold widely and was seen as an expression of British resilience. In this way, John Piper’s first Coventry painting became for Britons what Guernica had been for loyalist Spaniards’ (F. Spalding, ibid., p. 183).

We are very grateful to Rev. Dr Stephen Laird FSA for preparing this catalogue entry.