‘Buckingham Palace, London’ - CE Turner, 1942

Charles E. Turner (1883­–1965) was a professional illustrator and artist best known for maritime and aviation subjects. From 1919 to 1961 he was a prolific illustrator for the Illustrated London News and did similar illustration for The Sphere during the Second World War. He started out as a lithographer and art department manager in Manchester between 1904 and 1916. During the First World War he served as Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Air Service station Calshot, Hampshire, and was discharged as a Captain (Tech) RAF in 1918. In 1919 he exhibited ‘F2A Flying Boat taking off at the Royal Academy under the name of ‘Captain C. E. Turner’. Inter-war commercial projects included images for shipping lines and the design of ‘Churchill Cigars’ boxes. In 1939 Turner described himself as ‘Artist, Illustrator & Painter…RAF Volunteer Reserve Captain’, and also as ‘divorced’. He remarried the same year and moved to Looe, Cornwall where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. In 1942 he exhibited ‘The Vinegar Johnnie’ Convoy Signal V.J: (Close up and keep Station)’ at the Royal Academy. In 1943 Turner by then aged sixty joined HMS Woolston at Rosyth on an East Coast Convoy to Sheerness on the Thames Estuary and produced his fine painting of the destroyer approaching the Forth Bridge (NMM 3731, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London). Many of his oil and watercolour paintings of the two World Wars are preserved in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, London, and at the IWM, London.