A House Collapsing on Two Firemen, Shoe Lane, London, EC4

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Use this image under Non-Commercial licence.

You can embed media or download low resolution images free of charge for private and non-commercial use under the IWM Non-Commercial Licence.

By downloading or embedding any media, you agree to the terms and conditions of the IWM Non Commercial Licence, including your use of the attribution statement specified by IWM. For this item, that is: © IWM Art.IWM ART LD 1353

Accepted Non-commercial Use

Permitted use for these purposes:

Personal use for non-commercial research and private study and other uses under the UK’s exceptions to copyright and those exceptions to copyright in place where the user is located.

Use on websites that are primarily information-led, research-oriented and not behind a paywall.

Use on personal social media accounts, provided the individuals are not promoting themselves commercially.

Non-Commercial educational use for the purpose of teaching and instruction, including internal training.

Downloading audio-visual for non-commercial offline listening or viewing.

Free exhibitions held in venues, which do not charge an entry fee.

If you would like to use IWM collections materials in a way that is not covered above, require a commercial licence, high-resolution copies, or have manipulation requests, please contact the Media Sales & Licensing Team. Digital files of films and sound recordings are available at cost depending on intended use.
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description

Object description

image: A collapsing wall is on the point of burying two firemen. Debris, fire and smoke fill the air.

Label

Artist Leonard Rosoman signed up with the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) in London at the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1945 he went on to be appointed as an official war artist, travelling to Australia with the British Pacific Fleet. During the 1950s, Rosoman taught at the Royal College of Art where his students included the artist David Hockney. Image Rosoman witnessed this scene of a collapsing wall during the Blitz and painted the picture to exorcise his haunted memory. It became one of his most famous paintings, however in later life he admitted he was disappointed with the result which he saw as too direct and literal. History The AFS was part of the Civil Defence Service and mainly staffed by unpaid volunteers. In London, a group of artists served in the AFS and held a Firemen Artists exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1941, where this painting was exhibited.

Label

The horrific scene in Shoe Lane in the City of London was one that Rosoman witnessed as a fellow fireman. The falling wall trails chaos and disorder in its wake, its own rigid structure about to break and kill the firemen still clutching their hoses. Rosoman later expressed dissatisfaction with the painting as an over literal response but the effect on the viewer is still powerful and intensely disconcerting. The painting was exhibited in the Firemen Artists exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1941. With the outbreak of the Second World War imminent, Leonard Rosoman had joined the auxiliary fire service and continued to serve until April 1945 when he was appointed as an official war artist with the British Pacific fleet. Both the navy and the landscape of blitzed London provided a natural subject for his neo-romantic work where machines are poised to destroy and buildings are animated by destruction.