Signed l.r.: Dorothy J.Coke

Watercolour over ink and pencil, 36 by 46.5 cm (14 by 18 ¼ ins)

Provenance: bequeathed by the painter to fellow artist Norman Clark, RWS (1913-1992); thence by descent

Dorothy Coke was barely out of the Slade School of Art when she was approached by the War Memorials Committee at the end of the First World War. Recognised by Sir Muirhead Bone as a painter of particular promise, she was the first woman artist to be considered for war art in an official capacity. Although the commission was not fulfilled, Bone acquired two of her watercolours from the time which are now in the Imperial War Museum. She was subsequently elected a member of the New English Art Club in 1919 aged only twenty-two. Figures in a Street, Leytonstone is an extremely rare example of her wartime figure work and bears strong comparison with her watercolour War Allotments in a London Suburb in the Imperial War Museum (acc.ART 2366). As such it can be considered as part of her small body of work from the period that focused on the more everyday aspects of life at home during the War. Coke subsequently executed a number of notable works for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee during World War Two. She was based in Brighton where she taught for most of her life at the town’s art college.