* This week we publish a second extract from Surbiton resident Beryl Williams' biography of Sutton painter Elva Blacker...

One of Elva's paintings, a study of pilots at a debriefing session at Biggin Hill, was included in an RAF exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 1943, where it was viewed by Queen Elizabeth, who talked with the artist.

The painting shows Group Captain AG (Sailor) Malan DSO DFC of South Africa with Squadron Leader BE de la Torre, the Intelligence Officer, Wing Commander RM Milne DFC, Wing Commander JH Slater AFC and Flying Officer JM Emerson.

This painting is now held together with many other examples of her wartime work, in the archives of the RAF Museum, and they form a unique record of the men and women who served with the RAF in those days of strife.

Sometimes, while making a sketch of a pilot, the sitter would have to leave hurriedly on a mission, and it could be a few weeks before it could be finished.

Sadly, some never returned to have their portrait completed.

Later posted in Manston, Elva drove, sketched and painted the pilots of 91 Squadron.

She attended a vocational training course and was then posted as a Sergeant Instructor in art and photography at two other RAF stations.

Towards the end of the war, she held an exhibition at her home at Egmont Corner, where catalogues were sold in aid of the RAF Benevolent Fund.

Further exhibitions followed after her demobilisation.

One, also in aid of the Benevolent Fund and titled Air Force And Theatrical And Other Personalities, was held at the Embassy Theatre, London.

Dame Sybil Thorndike and Wilfred Pickles were two of the theatrical personalities whose portraits were on show.

Head and shoulder studies of the cast of London shows were drawn on one sheet of paper (similar to which Elva had carried out with the personnel of a section in her RAF work), and signed by each actor, and one collection includes fine sketches and the signatures of Dirk Bogarde, Kenneth More and Dandy Nicholls.

Elva Blacker attributed her ability to position sitters to her training in photography.

"I think," she was to say in an interview, "that some fashionable portrait painters would do well to look closely at the way they position their subject.

"In my view, many place them atrociously."

She sometimes re-painted a portrait completely because she felt her arrangement of the subject was wrong. She was also aware of the conflict between her idea of the work and what her sitter wanted to see, remarking: "Often the sitter has the final word."

This was because with her art she had to make her living.

On another occasion, asked if she was conscious of gaining merely a photographic likeness and perhaps not bringing out the subject's character and personality, she answered that because she was once a photographer she had perhaps been over-conscious of a photographic effect on the canvas.

She went on: "If one is using a loose style and approach, the artistic effect will be better but the person concerned will not be so happy."

August 13, 2002 15:30