This painting is set to become a sort of family heirloom! My dad graduated from the RN college at Dartmouth shortly before the second world war and went to sea in 1940 as a crew member of the I class destroyer HMS Imogen. It was his favourite ship and he often spoke of her and destroyers in general.
I came across a
photograph published by the Imperial War Museum of the ship. The photograph was
taken in 1940 from a troopship en route to Norway. I realized that my dad would
have been on the ship at that time, and decided to make a painting out of the
image. This proved more tricky than I first thought.
The voyage of the
Imogen
The actual voyage of
the Imogen was quite eventful. Apart from serving as one of the escorts for the
Home Fleet, an aircraft carrier, and hunting German ships in various fijords.
In the latter part of
1939 Imogen had been in action against their traditional enemy, the U Boat. In
company with their sister ship Ilex, they had sunk the U Boat U-42, and taken
some of her crew prisoner in the process. They also rescued 239 French merchant
seamen from lifeboats, they were survivors from two ships (Bretagne and Louisiane)
torpedoed by U Boats in the area.
Imogen was
accidentally rammed and sunk later in 1940 off the Scottish coast.
The painting (W&N
Artisan on canvas board, 50 x 76 cm)
I started with a poor quality photograph of the ship at sea. Using it as a basic outline I created a drawing of the ship on A3 drawing paper.
This gave me an
outline and the hints of various details but no clear resolution of what the
features I could make out were. At this point I referred to a number of books
(see references below) with period photographs and plans of the ship and other
ships like her. In the end I built a small paper and card model of the ship to
figure out what went where on the deck from the viewpoint of the original
photograph.
With the model to
clarify where and what items were visible from the viewers position I was able
to develop a more complete and I hope accurate drawing of the ship
The oil painting started with an under-painting where I mapped in the ships outline and shapes with blocks of colour. The sea and sky were also indicated with suitable glazing.
I then painted in the waves, a seascape and sky. This was new territory for me and the first rendition was an attempt at creating a typical northern sky of low dull grey clouds. The result was an unattractive image as you can see below.
I subsequently started
taking figure drawing lessons from Paul Birchall, a local artist. He provided
me with his views on the painting and gave some suggestions for its
improvement. He went so far as to provide a mock up of how he would deal with
it. As he pointed out, it’s a painting not a precise record of the photograph. I
cannot say the sky or sea was a precise anything, just my attempt at painting
something I was not particularly familiar or comfortable with.
However, I took Paul's wisdom on board, followed his advice and completely reworked the sky in the painting. I also made some changes to the sea to create a better feel for depth of view between the viewer and the ship. The result is the final version of the painting below.
HMS Imogen (D44) at sea
References
These are the books I
used to refine my understanding of what the ship looked like.
Brown, L (2009)
British destroyers A-I and Tribal classes. Seaforth Publishing.
ISBN9781848320239
Greentree, D and
Campell, D (2018) British destroyers vs German destroyers, Narvik 1940. Osprey
Publishing. ISBN9781472828583
Haarr, G H (2009) The
German invasion of Norway, April 1940. Naval Institute Press. ISBN9781591143239
Haarr, G H (2010) The
battle for Norway, April – June 1940. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN9781848320574
Haarr, G H (2013) The
gathering storm. The naval war in Northern Europe, September 1939 – April 1940.
Seaforth Publishing. ISBN9781848321403
Plevy, H (2006)
Destroyer actions, September 1939 – June 1940. The History Press.
ISBN9781862274639
