ARDIZZONE, Edward (artist). Shelter Scene [original colour-lithographed poster]. London The National Gallery. [1941]

Original colour-lithographed poster (40 x 30cm; image size 39 x 26cm), printed on fine machine glaze wartime paper, depicting Tilbury wartime underground shelter, beneath Tilbury railway arches at Stepney; near fine.

First edition, printed at the Baynard Press; executed by Ardizzone in his capacity as an Official War Artist. 

Tilbury shelter, located in Stepney, East London, was the most famous and most notorious of the public air-raid shelters created during World War II.  Built from a complex of cellars and vaults by the council to provide shelter for 3,000 people, and joined with the loading yard of a large warehouse, it welcomed Londoners from a wide area to benefit from its protection. Conditions there became very grim, with estimates of fourteen to sixteen thousand people using the space on particular nights. The nightmare of the London Blitz was a catalyst for protest and agitation calling for improvement in public shelters, with Tilbury seen as the “bête noire”.