Inscribed on the reverse: To Charles, Dean Cornwell,

Oil on board, 

15 x 17 in. (38.1 x 43.2 cm)

Provenance: Charles Swerdzewski, c.1945

Mary Ann Swerdzewski, Florida

This picture shows a degree of artistic licencse: the USAAF navigator is wearing a

Flak helmet but he should technically also be wearing an oxygen mask. The RAF only

used Flak suits and helmets experimentally and they were not general issue (being too heavy and uncomfortable) but the USAAF used them quite widely. It is also unusual to show a USAAF aeroplane flying by night : generally the RAF flew the night

operations and the USAAF were responsible for the day operations. The aeroplane in the window represents a Boeing B-17, ( a ‘Flying Fortress’).

Dean Cornwell, one of the most successful American illustrators of the first half of the Twentieth Century, worked as Brangwyn’s assistant from 1926-1930. For over three decades Cornwell was known as the “Dean of Illustrators”, highly regarded as a teacher and idolized by a generation of illustrators, lecturing at the Art Students League and at art museums and societies throughout the United States during the “Golden Age of Illustration”. Between 1914 and the late 1950s he produced over 1000 illustrations for poems, stories, novels and as advertising for hundreds of products, such as Palmolive Soap, Coca-Cola, Goodyear tyres, and Seagrams Whiskey. In addition his historic murals decorate over 20 public buildings across the United States.