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 Evelyn Mary Dunbar was a British artist, illustrator and teacher. She is notable for recording women's contributions to World War II on the United Kingdom home front, particularly the work of the Women's Land Army. She was the only women working for the War Artists' Advisory Committee on a full-time salaried basis. Dunbar had a deep devotion to nature and a particular affection for the landscape of Kent. Dunbar was modest regarding her achievements and outside of the post-war mainstream art world which has led to some neglect of her work until recent years. Dunbar studied at the Royal College of Art from 1929 to 1933. She painted murals at Brockley County Secondary School, and was a member of the Society of Mural Painters. After the war she painted portraits, allegorical pictures and especially landscapes. She attempted a return to mural painting in 1958 with a commission at Bletchley Park Teacher Training College, but was unable to fulfil the original specification.
Dunbar was born in Reading, Berkshire, the fifth and youngest child of William and Florence (née Murgatroyd) Dunbar. Her father was Scottish, originally from Cromdale, Morayshire. In 1913 the family moved to Rochester, Kent, where William Dunbar established himself as a draper and bespoke tailor. Florence Dunbar, a Yorkshirewoman, was a keen gardener and amateur still-life artist. She was also a Christian Scientist and Evelyn Dunbar was also to remain a Christian Scientist throughout her life.
Evelyn Dunbar was educated at Rochester Grammar School for Girls, to which she had won a Kent County Council scholarship. In 1929 she won an Exhibition to study at the Royal College of Art. She graduated ARCA (Associate of the Royal College of Art) in 1933. In 1940 the Tate Gallery purchased one of her early student works, Study for Decoration:Flight 1930.
Prominent among her Royal College of Art tutors was Charles Mahoney. Encouraged by the Principal of the RCA, Sir William Rothenstein, Mahoney and a small group of fourth-year students including Dunbar were commissioned to decorate the assembly hall of Brockley County School for Boys, now Prendergast-Hilly Fields College, in south London with a series of murals illustrating Aesop's fables. Of the group Mahoney and Dunbar contributed most to the series, which was formally unveiled in 1936.
The commission for Brockley County Secondary School (now the upper site of Prendergast School, Brockley) consisted of five arched panels, each measuring 12' x 7' (3.66m x 2.12m), plus a pediment-height panoramic frieze (8' x 39': 2.44m x 11.89m) together with a number of lunettes, spandrels and the three ceiling areas beneath the gallery. The two panels on the south side of the hall were painted by the RCA students Violet Martin and Mildred Eldridge. Mahoney painted two panels and part of the gallery ceiling, while Dunbar undertook the remaining north side panel, the frieze, a lunette, 22 of the 24 spandrels and four roundels on the central ceiling. Subjects for these smaller areas included Minerva and the Olive Tree, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, while the subject for Dunbar's panel was The Country Girl and the Pail of Milk. The source of most of the fables was Aesop.
The principal figure in The Country Girl and the Pail of Milk was modelled by the older of her two sisters, Jessie. The subjects of Dunbar's murals and their interpretation predict the chief preoccupations of her artistic career. The frieze, a broad landscape of the area known as Hilly Fields was observed from life from the vantage point of a nearby water tower. Framed by two allegorical figures, the landscape is animated in the middle distance by dogs, people walking, pushing prams, working at their allotments. In the foreground are boys in the uniform cap and blazer of the then Brockley School engaged in various activities.
Dunbar and Mahoney spent some three years, 1933–36, completing the Brockley murals. During this time they formed a close relationship, which eventually ended in 1937. A collection of Dunbar's often lavishly illustrated letters to Mahoney covering the period of their relationship, 1933–37, are held in Tate Gallery archive. No letters from Mahoney to Dunbar remain.
In 1935 Dunbar was commissioned to provide the illustrations for The Scots Week-End and Caledonian Vade-Mecum for Host, Guest and Wayfarer (ed. Donald and Catherine Carswell, Routledge, London, 1936). The illustrations to this miscellany consist of pen and ink frontispiece, vignettes and tail pieces. This commission led to a more significant production, Gardeners' Choice (Routledge, London, 1937). This book, consisting of the history, characteristics and cultivation advice of 40 garden plants, illustrated in pen and ink, was jointly written and illustrated by Dunbar and Mahoney. Country Life magazine commissioned Dunbar to compose their Gardener's Diary 1938, a monthly journal and appointments book with literary texts chosen by Dunbar and illustrated with her pen and ink drawings.
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