WRNS Ratings Sail-making: On Board 'HMS Essex' at Devonport, 1918

Commissioned as part of Britain's official First World War art programme, this large canvas documents WRNS (Women's Royal Naval Service) ratings engaged in sail-making aboard HMS Essex at Devonport in 1918. Forbes was among numerous established artists commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee to document the home front and military support services, creating a pictorial archive of a war whose scale and character defied conventional battlefield heroism painting. The subject is unusual and significant: women performing skilled manual labour in direct support of the Royal Navy, a documentary subject that Forbes approached with the same unsentimental directness he had long applied to Cornish working life. The Imperial War Museum holds this as part of its extensive collection of First World War art.

The large canvas depicting women at industrial craft work in a naval interior required Forbes to apply his plein-air discipline to an artificial light environment. The sail-making activity — complex textile work — demanded careful observation of hands, tools, and the material being worked.