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.

Although this is a record of wartime merchant shipping activity in the London docks, it is also a picture of light, shadows and contrasts. The grey structures of the ships, grain silos and cranes are delicately silhouetted against a glaring white sky. In this subdued atmosphere, the touches of rust on the foreground’s vessel, or the vibrant dazzle design of that in the background, detach themselves evocatively.