A Balloon Site, Coventry is an oil on canvas painting undertaken in 1942 by the British artist Laura Knight. It portrays a group of people – mostly women – working to launch a barrage balloon in the outskirts of Coventry, an industrial city in the Midlands.
Coventry had been protected by barrage balloons since March 1939. From April 1941 women were used to operate the balloons, a crew of fourteen women replacing the ten men that had done so until then.[1] Filled with hydrogen and anchored to the ground by steel cables, the balloons forced aircraft to fly higher than their preferred altitude, making their bombing less accurate and the bombers more vulnerable to ground-based anti-aircraft fire.[1][2][3][a]The protection provided by the balloons was limited; on 14 November 1940 Coventry was the target of a German bombing raid, during which more than 10,000 incendiary bombs were dropped on the city.[2]
In early 1942 Laura had painted In for Repairs, showing members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) repairing a damaged barrage balloon, which so impressed the Air Ministry that it requested she paint the WAAF in action. She was commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (WAAC) and paid 100 guineas for the work,[4][5] which was undertaken in July and August 1942.[6]
A Balloon Site was displayed at the 1943 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, along with Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring (1943).[6] As at 2020, the painting is held by the Imperial War Museum.[1]
Composition
A Balloon Site shows the launch of a barrage balloon on the outskirts of Coventry. In the middle distance are several damaged buildings,[7] with the partial ruins of Coventry shown in the background.[5] In the foreground two groups work on launching the balloon. The group in the foreground – composed of three women and one man – are under the leadership of Jean Brydon, a female sergeant. A second group is shown on the far side of the balloon.[7][8][9]
According to the art historians Teresa Grimes, Judith Collins and Oriana Baddeley, A Balloon Site and In For Repairs “are about activity, the concentration and absorption in work generated by a group endeavour are central to their composition”.[10]
The protection provided by the balloons was limited; on 14 November 1940 Coventry was the target of a German bombing raid, during which more than 10,000 incendiary bombs were dropped on the city.[2]
Morden, Barbara. Laura Knight: A Life. McNidder and Grace, 2013.
Speck, Catherine. Beyond the Battlefield. Reaktion Books, 2014.
Staff writer. “Coventry Scene an Academy Success.” Coventry Evening Telegraph, 6 May 1943, p. 1.
Wosk, Julie. Woman and the Machine: Representations from the Spinnng Wheel to the Electronic Age. John Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Cookie Consent
We use cookies to optimise our website and our service. By clicking on “All cookies”, you consent to us using all cookies and plug-ins as described in our Cookie policy.
Functional cookies
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.