William Dring (1904-90) earned his reputation as a fine draughtsman and portrait painter whilst studying under Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Art between 1922 and 1925. He worked as a teacher of drawing and painting at the Southampton School of Art until 1940 when he was employed by the War Artist Advisory Committee, first as official war artist to the Admiralty and later to the Air Ministry. He made a large number of portrait drawings of individuals and groups, all remarkable for their informality. Dring travelled extensively to complete his commissions. The drawing is always precise and carefully modelled using pastel, a medium in which he specialised, and which allowed him to capture the likeness and spirit of his subjects quickly and under a variety of circumstances.

This pastel depicts the stokers mess of the great battleship HMS ‘King George V’. Below the mount Dring has named the figures in this image as stokers L. Pedder, F. Wright, and Leading Stoker E. Daniels. The stokers were responsible for feeding the boilers in the engines of the ship, a tough and physically demanding job. Here though, Dring has represented the stokers in a well-earned moment of rest, writing letters home or reading.

The ‘King George V’ became the flagship of the home fleet under Admiral Sir John Tovey, and was made famous in May 1942 when she was involved in sinking the infamous German battleship ‘Bismarck’. The importance of the destruction of the ‘Bismarck’ was articulated by Winston Churchill when he said ‘’Bismarck’ must be sunk at all costs and if to do this it is necessary for ‘King George V’ to remain on the scene she must do even if it subsequently means towing ‘King George V’’.

The ‘King George V’ class of battleship was completed for the Navy early in World War II. The ‘King George V’ was the first in the class of five ships. Originally intended to be named ‘King George VI’, the King requested that the ship be named in honour of his late father instead. A later battleship of the same class instead was named HMS ‘Duke of York’ in honour of the King himself.