Gladys E. Reed

[anteros_lmc]

The National Maritime Museum published a lovely blog post today as part of International Women's Day commemorating the wartime artist Gladys E. Reed. Reed joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) in 1943 and over the next two years, while serving in Liverpool and Birkenhead, she sketched her fellow WRNS at work and leisure. After the war, Reed offered her sketches to the NMM who procured fourteen of her drawings. Nothing of Reed's later life is known and the museum recently issued a public press appeal to try and learn more about her.

Reed had a talent for capturing her colleagues in unguarded moments and, if anything, her works remind me of the sketches of Gabriel Bray who had a similar talent for recording the day to day lives of his shipmates 150 years previously.

Wren torpedoman servicing torpedo tubes

Night Journey – naval personnel asleep in a railway compartment

Comments

[eglantine-br.livejournal.com]

Those are very moving somehow. They are so immediate-- the line of the leg and foot, balancing the woman with the torpedo, the way the two men are huddled, asleep. They do remind me of Bray. There is a sort of sweetness there, an affection for humanity. This is notably lacking in some other artists of the earlier group.

[nodbear.livejournal.com]

my father used to describe a journey he made on leave from Belfast to Portsmouth to visit my uncle who was in the navy when dad was a rookie soldier in 1940
he had to sleep sitting up on his pack in the corridor and this is so evoctive
I do hope they find out more about her

[aletheiafelinea.livejournal.com]

Great! She really captured the atmosphere of moments.