Rebecca and her sister Pip found a glass room that was a chaos of weeds, dust and cobwebs. It was also filled with pots of paint, brushes and pencils, all left to hand, as if their owner had just stepped out of the room.<\/p>
Elva Blacker was a renowned artist whose career spanned many decades. She created her most important work during wartime, when she painted behind-the-scenes images of Royal Air Force <\/a>servicemen and women. She captured a unique time in British history, in all of its intensity.\u00a0<\/p> In recent years, Rebecca has become fascinated with her great aunt\u2019s life story and achievements. \u201cI never met Elva, but that visit became a marked moment in my childhood,\u201d Rebecca explains. \u201cElva had died a year earlier, and the house remained vacant. Her main living area downstairs was an intriguing museum of Blacker family life, packed with furniture and artefacts as well as her easel, brushes and paints.\u201d<\/p> In 2018, Rebecca and her mother Julia found boxes in the attic that her late father General Sir Jeremy Blacker had kept safe. \u201cThey were full of Elva\u2019s life and contained letters, keepsakes and old-fashioned photograph albums. This spurred me on to discover more about her and to keep her memory alive.\u201d<\/p> Elva was born in Sutton in 1908, the daughter of a well-to-do photographer William Blacker and his wife Clara. Thanks to William\u2019s profession, Rebecca owns many photographs of Elva as a child \u2013 with her cherubic face and long dark curls, she made the perfect model. Indeed William sold photos of her as postcards.\u00a0<\/p> Despite being born into a middle-class family with many opportunities, Elva was to face a number of obstacles in the pursuit of her dreams. During the early to mid-20th century, Britain was still a very patriarchal society and inequalities existed everywhere. Elva had an independent spirit, and Jeremy remembered her as someone born before her time.\u00a0<\/p> Elva had an independent spirit, and Jeremy remembered her as someone born before her time<\/p><\/blockquote> She had two brothers Maurice and Kenneth, who was Rebecca\u2019s grandfather. \u201cThey were very driven, academic young men who were formally educated,\u201d Rebecca says. \u201cElva\u2019s passion from an early age was painting and it was her ambition to study at art school. However, her father wanted her to continue the family business, so she was taken out of school aged 15 and sent to study photography in London.\u00a0<\/p> \u201cI was astonished when I discovered that Elva studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic. This later became the University of Westminster, where I studied literature. The two of us walked the same corridors.\u201d<\/p> Elva was determined to study fine art. While working as a photographer, she attended evening classes so that she could reach the level required to attend University College London\u2019s prestigious Slade School of Fine Art. Finally, in 1936 she won a place at the age of 28, and became an expert in portrait miniatures.<\/p> Following the outbreak of the Second World War<\/a>, Elva drove vehicles for the Blood Transfusion Service. In 1942, she was called up for service and joined the Women\u2019s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) as a motor transport driver. After training, she was sent to Fighter Command at Biggin Hill in Kent.\u00a0<\/p>
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