W.E. PIDGEON (WEP) War Artist

WAR PAINTINGS 1943 - 1945

	Ascending The Pimple (Australian War Memorial Collection, Accession No, ART29338, Reproduced Australian Women's Weekly, 10 June 1944)		On Shaggy Ridge
	Ground Crew and Fighter, North-West Australia		Hop In. "There is a magnificent canteen run by the publican of that new pub set back from the footpath on Botany Road at Mascot....Dozens of tins of asparagus - plenty cigs, tobacco, Minties, chocolate and god knows what!"
	Loading A Bomber On A Camoflaged Field, North-West Australia - The plane is from the famous Hudson bomber squadron. The pilots and air crews are held in the highest regard by all. Every day, with the precision and regularity of mail trains, these Hudsons drop a load of bombs on Jap stations in the islands to the north - Women's Weekly
	U.S. Hospitality Tent - U.S. Bomber Station, North-West Australia		Advanced Dressing Station, Guy's Post, New Guinea
	Ground Staff, Morotai - Trucked like cattle, ground staff arrive on a Morotai strip. - Women's Weekly		Kittyhawks, Morotai - Torrential rain makes discarded belly tanks look like stepping stones. Bomb shattered palms form a giant palisade against the sky.
	Fortuna III and Thelma, Morotai - Wrecked Beaufighters in a Morotai 'graveyard'. Repair and salvage units leave nothing but a heap of metallic bones. Australian sailors snoop around for souvenirs.
	Barber's Shop In A Forward Area (Australian War Memorial Collection, Accession No, ART29337, Reproduced Australian Women's Weekly, 29 July 1944)   "He's a hell of a little barber....an ex ladies' hairdresser from Farmers or, some say, Borrowmans - anyway cuts a pretty hair. The charge is 1/- of which he gets 6d. You sit on a sawn off log in a parlour of the most delicate hessian".
	Interior, Transport Plane Evacuating Wounded		The Official Box
	Barges and Swimmers		Smoko

W.E. PIDGEON: War Correspondent/Artist

William Edwin (‘Wep’) Pidgeon was born in Sydney in 1909 and died in 1981. After studies at the J.S. Watkins School and East Sydney Technical College, Sydney, he began his professional career as a cadet artist on the Evening News. He won two first prizes and one highly commended in the Australia at War exhibition 1944-45 and was three times an Archibald Prize winner (1958,1961 and 1968).

When he became an official war correspondent for the Australian Women's Weekly and Consolidated Press during World War II he was already a practising artist and the works in this exhibition reflect his ability to record, with insight and intimacy, the everyday life of soldiers and airmen behind the lines.

• Further information regarding these works is available at  www.wepidgeon.com

• All works are subject to Copyright owned by Mrs Dorothy Pidgeon, contact 
  peter@wepidgeon.com for further information.

Title: Group Captain Noel Quinn 

Maker: Pidgeon, William

Place made: Sydney 1968 

oil on canvas 101.4 x 76.4 cm.  

AWM copyright