‘Recording Britain'

‘Recording Britain' (in full ‘Recording the Changing Face of Britain'). A project for making a pictorial record of Britain begun in 1939 at a time when widespread destruction was expected to occur during the Second World War. It was sponsored by the Pilgrim Trust, a foundation established in 1930 by the American philanthropist Edward Harkness (1874–1940) ‘to help preserve the national heritage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and to promote the future well-being of the country and its people'. The scheme was administered by three leading figures in the art world (who later were all members of the War Artists' Advisory Committee—see OFFICIAL WAR ART): Kenneth Clark (director of the National Gallery), William Russell Flint (representing the Royal Academy), and Percy Jowett (principal of the Royal College of Art); they agreed the subjects, chose the artists, and organized exhibitions of the work produced (including several at the National Gallery). Almost a hundred artists took part, including Walter Bayes, Graham Bell, John Piper, Michael Rothenstein, Kenneth Rowntree, and Ruskin Spear, and more than 1,500 pictures were produced, covering most of the English counties and several in Wales. In 1943 the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, took responsibility for the paintings, loaning some of them to provincial galleries. After the war the Oxford University Press published four volumes of reproductions of the pictures for the Pilgrim Trust (Recording Britain, edited by Arnold Palmer, 1946–9), and the Edinburgh firm of Oliver & Boyd later published a companion volume on Scotland (Recording Scotland, edited by James B. Salmond, 1952).