Refugee Children

Rutherford was born in Chelmsford and became an official war artist during the Second World War recording her work as part of the Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment. She performed a variety of jobs: driving a mobile canteen round gun batteries on the east coast and working as a nurse in hospitals and convalescent homes for servicemen. 'It was an exhausting struggle trying to be a good artist and a good nurse', she remembered. 'In the end , I gave up being a good nurse'. This work depicts two evacuee children and was recently discovered in folios unopened since end of World War Two.