The Sketchbook

In February 1941, when he was appearing in Diversion No. 2, Dirk started a sketchbook. It seems to have been swiftly filled and is, alas, the only one of his that survives.

Apart from a pair of drawings relating directly to Wyndham’s Theatre, the book mainly comprises his impressions of women’s fashion – a subject in which he had excelled at Chelsea School of Art, and which he was taught by Graham Sutherland’s wife, Kathleen. However, it also contained several, more fully realised, depictions of how the war was affecting London. These echoed darkly and powerfully work by another of his tutors, Henry Moore. >>