Object of the Day: “Ham Street - the Walls of Ham House, Showing the Stables,” 1940

The Victoria & Albert Museum

On this blessed “Ham for Miss Landers Day,” I thought it best to examine some ham and/or pork-related artifacts and art. This isn’t specific to ham as a foodstuff, but it does have ham in the title, and, that’s always fun.

This drawing from 1940 is signed by John Sanderson-Wells 1872-1955). It depicts a view of a quiet road in Ham, Richmond upon Thames, England, bordered by trees on the left and the boundary wall of Ham House on the right. The work is pen and ink, tinted with blue chalk and watercolor on paper and is from the “Recording Britain,” a collection of topographical watercolors and drawings made in the early 1940s during the Second World War.

In 1940 the Committee for the Employment of Artists in Wartime (a division of the Ministry of Labour and National Service) introduced a plan to employ artists to record the home front in Britain. This scheme was funded by a grant from the Pilgrim Trust and offered employment to some of England’s finest watercolor painters who made paintings and drawings of buildings, scenes, and places which conveyed a sense of national identity.

The project, known as “Recording the Changing Face of Britain,” was the brain-child of Sir Kenneth Clark, then the director of the National Gallery. Over 1500 works were produced by 97 artists, of whom 63 were specially commissioned. I’m sure Miss Landers would have approved.