Bernard Hailstone was born in 1910 into a large family, in Hadlow, Kent. His elder brother, Harold was a well-known Punch artist and illustrator. Bernard was born the seventh child of a seventh son, a fact to which he attributed the good fortune and luck he enjoyed during his adventurous life. After education at the Judd School, Tonbridge, Hailstone attended Goldsmith’s College School of Art at Deptford under Clive Gardiner, then the Royal Academy Schools, with James Bateman and Walter Westley Russell. At the beginning of the Second World War, Hailstone felt the need to incorporate his artistic contribution to the war effort with more physical participation and joined the Auxiliary Fire Service. He witnessed at first-hand the horrific destruction caused by bombing during the Blitz. Along with such artists as Norman Hepple and Leonard Rosoman, Hailstone would set up his easel among the bombed London churches and smouldering buildings when there was a lull in the raids. The experiences of these firemen artists were not without their humorous side, for example, when Hailstone helped to extinguish a fire in a warehouse containing barrels of rum near the docks, or when he was disciplined for using His Majesty’s gas to give himself enough light to complete a picture after dark. Hailstone’s work brought him to the attention of Kenneth Clark and in 1941 the War Artists’ Advisory Committee commissioned him as official war artist to the Ministry of Transport. He supplemented this work with portraits of his colleagues in the fire services and other war workers. His portrait of W M Ladbrooke, Able Seaman, Merchant Navy (National Maritime Museum, London), was painted following a visit to the Merchant Navy convalescent home in Limpsfield around 1943. It embodies sympathy for the heroic, yet vulnerable sailor. Following his release from the fire service, Hailstone moved to Hull, where he continued to record the effects of the war from a civilian perspective. One such work is his Big Ben the Bargee, depicting a bargeman and his wife and completed in June 1943 (National Maritime Museum, London). Throughout the rest of the war, Hailstone travelled around the Mediterranean and North Africa, recording the activities of the Merchant Navy in a similar, sympathetic vein. In 1944 he joined South-East Asia Command, painting Lord Mountbatten and key members of his staff. The results are now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum, London. Thereafter, Hailstone pursued a career as a portrait painter and painted Sir Winston Churchill; Sir Peter Ustinov; Sir John Barbirolli; Paul Mellon; Commander Edward Whitehead (1970) and various members of the British Royal Family, but he just as happily painted ordinary members of the public. His portrait of Lord Olivier hangs in the bar of the Garrick Club in London. A considerable body of Hailstone’s work was donated by the Imperial War Museum to the Government Art Collection in 1946. These paintings include: Liberty Ship Loading Scrap at Alexandria (1943); Merchant Seaman (1943); Able-Seaman David Addison, Trawlerman (1943); Sam Johnson, Docker (1943); Radio Officer James Gordon Melville Turner and Captain Henry Jackson, OBE, Merchant Navy (both in Historic Room 79 at the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall); 2nd Engineer Officer Gordon Love Bastian, MBE, AM, Merchant Navy (1943-45) and Captain Banning, DSO, Merchant Navy Officer (1945; in Historic Room 79, of the MoD in Whitehall). In 1951 Hailstone led the campaign to save the Gothic Hadlow Castle in Kent from being demolished. A generous and warm-hearted man, he must have been one of the very few painters who could work with others around him. Hailstone was never happier than when he was dining in the convivial atmosphere of the Chelsea Arts Club, or teaching his pupils during the weekly painting classes he held at this studio. Teaching for him, was perhaps rather more an occasion for getting in touch with others rather than an economic necessity, for he had a cavalier attitude to money and an endearingly absent-minded and disorganised way of life, which kept his many friends amused. Notwithstanding, Hailstone was much in demand and he travelled the globe making new friends through his commissions. He often travelled to New York on the passenger liner QE2, and he would regale passengers with anecdote-laden after-dinner talks about his long and varied career and the eminent people he had painted. Bernard Hailstone died in 1987.