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.

Lieutenant Peter Danckwerts (1916-84), son of Rear-Admiral Victor Hilary Danckwerts, came from a family with a distinguished naval background. He was particularly interested in chemistry and after leaving Winchester College School he went on to obtain a first class honours degree in the subject from Balliol College, Oxford. After graduating in 1939 he worked for a short time in a small chemical company until the outbreak of war, when he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Given his interest in chemistry, he trained in bomb disposal and by the time of the Blitz in September 1940 had become Bomb Disposal Officer to the Port of London Authority. When a number of magnetic mines were dropped on a suburb in South London, Danckwerts volunteered to defuse them despite not having been trained to work with that type of mine. He worked tirelessly throughout the Blitz, on one occasion defusing sixteen mines in two days, barely allowing himself time to rest. In 1940 he was awarded the George Cross for bravery and devotion to duty. Later on in the war he carried on his bomb disposal work as Lieutenant on HMS ‘Cormorant’ off the coast of Gibraltar, but was wounded in a minefield in Sicily. He then joined combined operations headquarters in Whitehall and was awarded an MBE in December 1942. After the war he resumed his career in chemical engineering and completed a Master’s Degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dring has portrayed Danckwerts sitting tall, arms folded and facing slightly away from the viewer, staring into the middle distance. Danckwerts was known to have a reserved and rather aloof character, yet his outstanding talents and strong sense of humour meant that he was liked by many. The ribbon of the George Cross is visible on his left side and he is portrayed in front of a map of the Port of London area, the area that he was in charge of keeping safe during the Blitz.

(Bibliographical sources taken from K.G. Denbigh,’Peter Victor Danckwerts, 14 October 1916 – 25 October 1984’ in ‘Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society’, Vol.32, Dec, 1986, pp. 98-114, and the ‘Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’)