Commissioning and acquiring works

The WAAC acquired works in several ways. Artists were either salaried for a specific length of time, or were given commissions to record certain subjects.
The committee insisted that the pictures must be based on eye-witness accounts which meant that artists had to be in the middle of the action. It is therefore surprising that only three were killed: Eric Ravilious, Tom Hennell and Albert Richards.

Once allocated their specific commissions, the artists were given considerable freedom as to what they chose to paint. No chosen artist was pressured by the authorities into changing their own style or into producing a certain sort of art.

It would be naive to believe that the propaganda qualities of works were not taken into account, especially as the committee was financed by the Ministry of Information. Artists might have been given freedom, but their work still had to pass the censor. The documentary and representational qualities required by the scheme might seem very restrictive but it was actually in tune with the fairly conservative mood of most British art at the time. Nevertheless, Clark told The Studio 'The war artists' collection cannot be completely representative of modern English art because it cannot include those pure painters who are interested solely in putting down their feelings about shapes and colours'. This explains why there are no works by Ivon Hitchens, Ben Nicholson and Victor Pasmore in the scheme but makes the inclusion of both Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland, both of whose work was borderline, a very bold decision by the WAAC and one of its triumphs.