Shared Experience: Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring

Art and War

• Introduction
• Battle
• Work
• Leisure
• Service
• Casualties
• Captivity
• Home
• Artists

Loftus was an outstanding factory worker who had mastered complex engineering skills in a very short period, and Knight was commissioned to paint her at work in the factory. Knight was fascinated by circus artistes and dancers, and she emphasises the balance and posture of her subject at work. Industrial machinery was a wholly new element in Knight’s work but her technical accuracy was praised in contemporary reports: Knight, like Loftus, was proving herself in a traditionally male environment.

Paintings

• Corvette Galley
  Leonard Brooks
• Glass-blowers 'Gathering' from the Furnace
  Mervyn Peake
• Parachute Riggers
  Paraskeva Clark
• Sections of buoyancy tank and floating caissons, Sydney graving dock
  Herbert McClintock
• No 1 projectile shop, (Commonwealth Ordnance Factory, Maribyrnong)
  Sybil Craig
• Working in the snow, Australian Forestry Unit, Scotland
  Sheila Hawkins
• Hull Riveting
  Frederick B. Taylor
• ATS at Work
  Rodrigo Moynihan
• The Camouflage Workshop, Leamington Spa, 1940
  Edwin La Dell
• The Merchant Navy: The chain-locker
  Henry Carr
• Private Roy, Canadian Women's Army Corps
  Molly Lamb Bobak
• Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring
  Dame Laura Knight
• The billy boy
  William Dobell
• Transport driver (Aircraftwoman Florence Miles)
  Nora Heysen
• Weighing Down The Tail, New Brunswick
  Moses Reinblatt
• Patients waiting Outside a First Aid Post in a Factory
  Ruskin Spear