Paul Nash enlisted with the Artists Rifles in September 1914 and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, Hampshire Regiment in February 1917. Invalided home three months later he returned as an official war artist. Nash emerged as one of the most important and original painters of the war.

His letters to his wife in England contain moving descriptions of the seasons and the 'innocent countryside' devastated by war. ‘Spring in the Trenches’ is one of his early and finest oil paintings.

Notice that despite the apparent calm in the trenches depicted, the war continues with airplanes and anti-aircraft gun fire shown in the top right corner of the canvas.

A talented painter, Hartrick sought work connected to the war effort but being over age was turned down. He later contributed to 'The Great War: Britain 's Efforts and Ideals', a series of lithographs by well-known artists aimed at boosting morale as the public were becoming increasingly disillusioned by the war.

Hartrick's theme was ‘Women's Work’ for the 'Efforts' series. Packing TNT was deemed a dangerous trade. Women earned higher wages in overtly dangerous jobs and despite the safety rules 349 serious cases of TNT poisoning were reported; 109 were fatal. The press was encouraged to play down the dangers of TNT. Hartrick recalled that the worker’s face and hair were stained yellow with chemicals.

From 1940 Sutherland was employed as an official war artist. After capturing the Blitz in Swansea and London he documented industrial production. He witnessed the industrial effort of war time Britain recording tin mining, limestone quarrying and opencast coal extraction. Conflict is as much a contest of industrial output as it is a struggle on the battlefield.

Following his successful series of paintings recording blast furnaces in South Wales, Sutherland visited Woolwich Arsenal where he captured this scene. An apprentice engineer before training at Goldsmiths College of Art in London in 1921 he retained his fascination with machinery and industry and the technical processes involved.

Osmund Caine started his powerful and boldly designed painting Spider Hutments, Mychett Barracks, Aldershot while serving with the Military Police. He completed it in 1989 having retired from teaching at Twickenham College of Technology's Art School in 1976. It was chosen by The Rt Hon. the Lord Boateng to hang in his office at the Treasury after it was acquired for the Government Art Collection in 2002.

Boateng later invited him to view the painting in his office. Boateng said of the painting: 'War throws people together men and women, men and men, women and women, black, white, brown people of every hue in circumstances that are good bad ugly beautiful. This is a beautiful intimate communal and mysterious picture.'

Ploughing was a vital task in the domestic battle to raise food production and increase the area under tillage, reducing the need to import food. Conscription in 1916 made the need for women land workers pressing. In March 1917 an appeal was made to women to join the newly formed Women's Land Army. At its peak there were some 23,000 employed in agriculture and forestry.

The artists involved in creating lithographs for ‘The Great War: Britain's Efforts and Ideals’ series were given the focus of his commission by the Department of Information. All work had to meet censorship regulations before it was exhibited at the Fine Art Society in London in July 1917. The exhibition later toured to Paris and the United States.

Bateman worked as a camouflage officer at the Civil Defence Camouflage Establishment before resigning in 1940 to undertake paintings of land work subjects for the Ministry of Information. Coming from a farming background he believed he could 'make on authentic record with some pictorial value'.

The demands placed on increasing food production necessitated a larger substitute farm workforce. Adult Harvest Camps were vigorously promoted throughout 1940 and 1941. Local and urban volunteers, servicemen, students, youth service volunteers, voluntary labour clubs, the Women's Land Army, conscientious objectors, prisoners of war, displaced persons of varying nationalities and evacuees all helped bring the harvest home.

Robert MacBryde studied at Glasgow School of Art, where he met his lifelong partner Robert Colquhoun. The trailblazing artists lived in London from the early years of the Second World War. MacBryde had a lung weakness and was classified as unfit for military service having withdrawn his registration as a conscientious objector.

He unsuccessfully sought to work as an official war artist and continued painting outside of state patronage. Inspired and outraged by the conflict, he sought to get beneath the surface of what he observed. His poetic vision of bomb damage, with its strong sense of design and colour, shows buildings with roofs blown off and twisted metal railings in the vicinity of St Paul's Cathedral during the London Blitz.

Kaff Gerrard was a prizewinning student at the Slade. She was virtually unknown during her lifetime, although ‘Swan Song (Flying Bomb)’ was acquired by the Ministry of Works. Her stylised and symbolically ambiguous depiction of the twisted wreckage of a pilotless bomb, lying on the Sussex Downs near her home, shows her interest in Surrealism and Paul Nash's work. The ironic title alludes to a belief that swans sing just before they die.

The German V-1 flying bombs were intended to terrorise civilians and undermine morale as they fell relentlessly on London. Groombridge, where Gerrard lived, was near the so-called 'Bomb Alley', the direct route for enemy aircraft on their way to London.

A veteran of the First World War Henderson became one of the first salaried official war artists of the Second World War. Attached to the Air Ministry he was sent to Scotland, he visited RAF Leuchars on Fife's east coast and took to the skies in a training aircraft.

This is a study for the painting ‘Machine Gun Post’ (1941) now in the RAF Museum. A Type 27 pillbox, like the one shown here, remains at RAF Leuchars. The Lewis light machine guns shown in this work were extensively used in the anti-aircraft role. With an effective range of about 400 meters a gunner had to choose the perfect moment when to fire at a speeding aircraft so that he was not reloading at the wrong moment.

Bone was appointed as an official war artist in 1943 and given the courtesy rank of Lieutenant in the Royal Navy. He recorded coastal locations, naval life and craft, including on board submarines. In 1945 he went to Norway to paint captured naval bases and the wrecked German battleship Tirpitz

This scene was likely captured on one of Northern Ireland's lochs where the Royal Navy trained the crews of its newly built landing craft for use in the landings in the Mediterranean and Normandy. The box structure to the right of the image not only protects the chart table but, with the curtain, is there to control light as well. Light discipline at sea at night was vital as even a small electric torch could be seen for many miles.

In 1939 Ravilious was selected to work part-time for the Admiralty as an official war artist. His six-month contract took him around the UK and Norway. In July 1940 he went to the Royal Navy’s submarine base, HMS Dolphin, at Gosport to draw submarine interiors.

The hot, cramped conditions made drawing difficult, especially when the submarines dived. The Submarine series did not produce finished paintings, but Ravilious decided that they could be a theme for a set of lithographs which he had printed personally. His original drawings were purchased by the government.

Later assigned to the RAF, Ravilious went to Iceland in 1942. An aircraft in which he was a passenger failed to return to base and was never found.

During the first World War British seaside resorts were asked by the War Office to provide hospital accommodation for wounded and sick soldiers. The authorities, in line with the paternalistic thinking of the time, felt that the exotic exterior and interiors of the Brighton Pavilion inspired by Asian architecture, would make Indian Army soldiers feel more at home.

This painting, which shows the Music Room at the Pavilion, was one of the first paintings the Imperial War Museum acquired following its founding in March 1917. Burleigh studied at Brighton School of Art and in Paris and was known for his paintings of the interiors of buildings around Brighton and Hove.

Ethel Gabain was one of the few female official war artists of the Second World War. A renowned lithographer and painter she made a significant contribution and championed the role of women as they took on what were traditionally seen as male roles. Despite ill health she travelled the length and breadth of Britain recording their activities.

This work was officially commissioned in 1940 and is one of her most accomplished and detailed works. Although Britain had been preparing for war since 1937 the speed of the German conquest of Europe was unexpected and consequently medical supplies of all sorts were in short supply. Here Women’s Voluntary Service members are making bedding or hospital pyjamas.

The First World War led to mass displacement, and up to 15 million refugees sought safety following the German invasion of Belgium and France. Governments struggled to manage refugee numbers. Some refugees found sympathy, others found resentment and hostility, a situation repeated during the Second World War and today.

The plight of refugees was used for propaganda purposes and to raise funds for the Red Cross and other organisations. Bournemouth received Belgian refugees from Antwerp and surrounding districts and a Belgian Refugee Committee was established.

Francis Hodge was a Captain in the Royal Field Artillery on the Western Front where he was wounded in 1917. He painted throughout the conflict, including this work.

The trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal was held at Nuremberg from November 1945 to October 1946. The individual defendants were indicted for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Laura Knight spent three months in 1946 observing the trials from inside a courtroom broadcasting box.

Study No. I was the first of a number of large-scale studies. Hermann Goring (1893-1946) sits at the end of the front row of the prisoners' benches, wearing headphones for to hear the translation. Next to Goring is Rudolf Hess (1894-1987) then Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893-1946) and then the stiffly upright uniformed Wilhelm Keitel (1882-1946).

Study No. 2 shows further defendants seated in two rows in Courtroom 600 on the second floor of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice.

On occasion Knight had to keep the window to her box closed so as to shut out the court happenings, as the horrors were often 'beyond bearing' and she could not concentrate on her composition. The Nazi regime murdered an estimated 17 million people including Jews, political opponents, prisoners of war, resistance fighters and civilians.

The result of these studies was Knight's large, monumental realist oil painting 'The Nuremberg Trial', now in the Imperial War Museum, which shows the courtroom with prosecutors and defendants against the backdrop of the devastated, burnt-out city ruins.