Warpaint, by Alicia Foster

Warpaint

Author: Alicia Foster

ISBN-13: 978-0241145685

Publisher: Penguin Fig Tree

Guideline Price: Sterling12.99

In 1939, Britain's ministry of information established the War Artists Advisory Committee (Waac). It was the brainchild of Sir Kenneth Clark, then the chairman of the National Gallery, and its mission was to employ artists who would "record the war at home and abroad", showing the people of Britain and the world just how well the country was coping. The artists were given sketching permits (so they could draw sensitive subjects in public without looking like potential spies) and official support to document everything from air bases to knitting circles. Inevitably, the vast majority of the artists were men, the most famous of whom was Henry Moore, whose powerful images of Londoners sheltering from the Blitz in underground stations are probably the most celebrated results of the scheme.

But there were also female artists, and in 1943 one of them wrote the introduction to a book called War Pictures by British Artists: Women , part of the Oxford University Press's War Pictures series. Her name was Laura Knight, and she – or at least a fictionalised version of her – is one of the central characters in Alicia Foster's excellent debut novel. Set in 1942 and early 1943, when the fate of Britain was still in the balance, Warpaint is both a gripping thriller and a fascinating picture of four female artists attempting to work under extraordinary and often dangerous circumstances. It begins with the news that two very different ministry-of-information projects are under threat from budget cuts: the Waac and Black, the black-propaganda team whose job it is to design and produce leaflets and letters, often pornographic, in an attempt to destroy the morale of German soldiers and civilians.

Clark (portrayed here in deeply unflattering colours) needs to show the ministry that his scheme provides value for money, but the Waac is employing several female artists who haven’t produced work for months: the famous Knight, a beautiful but difficult painter called Faith Farr, and a seemingly mousy upper-middle-class girl called Cecily Browne. Clark insists that the women come up with some paintings or be dismissed from the scheme. But there are problems: Laura is refusing to stick to the approved subjects for female artists and is determined to paint the activities of the forces; the shy Cecily can’t stop worrying about her RAF pilot fiance; and Faith is terrified of being discovered by her mysterious and dangerous ex-husband, David. When she ran away from their Hampstead flat she took something from him, and he wants it back.

Meanwhile, in a luxurious villa near Bletchley Park, another artist faces her own challenges. Vivienne Thayer is a glamorous woman who sometimes wonders how she ended up spending her days drawing explicit images of German hausfraus passionately embracing foreign soldiers. One of the small team of Black operatives, she is married to Sam, the charismatic head of the project, but she’s having an affair with a fellow operative called Frido, a German anti-Nazi activist. When their affair is discovered by a member of the team, Vivienne is left with a terrible choice.

Nearly 70 years after the end of the war, the British home front continues to entrance both writers and readers, including me; I would happily read a car manual if it was set in England in 1941. And I wasn't disappointed by Warpaint . There's not much cheerful Blitz spirit or glory in Foster's depiction of wartime life. Cecily is in a state of constant terror, worrying about her fiance, while Faith is always hungry and grubby as she moves from one dismal, Patrick Hamiltonesque boarding house to another in an attempt to elude her terrifying ex-husband. And yet the book shows that even within the limitations forced on them by the government, the women's work has meaning. As Cecily says: "The women I paint are carrying on despite everything . . . Insignificant, everyday activities, far away from the front, small acts of kindness, of endurance . . . If civilisation does survive, it will be because of that." Laura's work celebrates the heroism of women in the armed forces; Faith's shows the working-class Blitz survivors. They also serve who only sit and paint.

All the artists are skilfully written, defying the stereotypes their personas suggest. With her gypsy garb and flamboyant manner, the elderly Laura could have been a ludicrous figure, but Foster shows her determination and kindness; the vampish Vivienne is willing to sacrifice her own happiness for a greater cause; Cecily, who initially seems like a pampered amateur in comparison with the others, confronts real horror and then uses her work to console and comfort. Although Laura is the only one of the artists whose real name is used, the afterword reveals that the other three women were all based on real war artists.

Foster is an art historian, and her descriptions of the painters' work is so vivid that when I looked up images of Knight's work I instantly recognised several of the paintings from the book. Cecily was based on the painter Evelyn Dunbar, and Foster has imagined convincing and powerful stories for some of Dunbar's real paintings, such as A Knitting Party ; in the fictional version, the peaceful knitting circle is destroyed by an air raid while Cecily sketches. But Cecily, Laura and Faith keep on painting despite this – and their own small acts of kindness and endurance help them, and those around them, to survive.

Anna Carey's debut novel, The Real Rebecca , won the Senior Children's Book prize at the 2011 Irish Book Awards. Her second book, Rebecca's Rules , was shortlisted for the same prize in 2012.