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It is as a war artist on the Home Front that Piper is
perhaps best known. His paintings of bombed
buildings caught the full architectural drama of the
Blitz. In November 1940 the War Artists Advisory
Committee sent him to Coventry the morning after
two thirds of the city centre had been destroyed.
With the fires still smouldering John Piper’s job was
to record the cathedral that, overnight, was destroyed
– smoke-blackened ruins, open to the skies.
During the Second World War canvases, oil paints,
brushes, and paper were really difficult to come by.
Few had the inclination to buy art during those dark
days and fewer had the money to buy it. Fortunately
for Piper
he was maybe the most versatile visual man
of his generation able to turn his hand his to book
illustration, stage design, pottery and ceramics,
tapestry (notably at Chichester Cathedral), textiles
and stained glass windows.
The British government
also paid artists to produce murals for propaganda
purposes.
The Twentieth Century Society is currently
campaigning to preserve up to a thousand murals
painted in the post war period. One of them is Piper’s
An Englishman’s Home
, a huge work painted on
42 panels displayed in 1951 at the Festival of Britain
but subsequently languished for years in an Essex
Barn. It enjoyed an airing for the 50
th
anniversary of
the Festival of Britain but it is still looking for a
permanent home. I vote for Cressing Temple Barns.
Piper painted many set designs, most of them for
premieres of Benjamin Britten’s operas for whom
Myfanwy was librettist and he
participated in Kenneth
Clark's Recording Britain project, which aimed to
boost the country’s morale by celebrating our natural
beauty and architectural heritage. Piper, said a friend,
Coventry Cathedral 15 November 1940 (c) Manchester City Galleries