During the First World War, John Everett was at first unable to sketch outdoors due to wartime security regulations, but in the spring of 1918, the Ministry of Information asked him to depict London river scenes. Everett received a permit to draw, and that summer, spent every day at the docks.
What attracted him most were the ships covered in ‘dazzle painting’. Dazzle was a type of camouflage developed by the artist Norman Wilkinson in 1917, in response to the heavy losses sustained by British merchant ships to German U-boat submarines. Everett’s dazzle pictures are among his most daring works for their sense of composition and modernity. They were first displayed at the
Goupil Gallery in London in November 1918.

John Everett’s wartime drawings remained in his studio for over 30 years before being bequeathed to the Museum. The huge scale of his output meant that these were probably stacked, possibly in cold and damp environments. Mould stains on the surface or original mounts of many works suggest this. Removing this drawing’s mount during conservation treatment revealed that Everett used an earlier watercolour as a backing.