| Dorothy Coke | |
| Birth Date: | 11 April 1897 |
| Birth Place: | Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England |
| Death Place: | Brighton, Sussex, England |
| Field: | Painting |
| Training: | Slade School of Fine Art |
Dorothy Josephine Coke (11 April 1897 – 1979) was an English artist notable for her work as a war artist on the British home front during the Second World War.[1] Coke was also an art teacher and as an artist was known for her watercolours, which have a very free, open-air quality to them.[2]
Coke was born in Southend-on-Sea in Essex in 1897, where her father was a tea exporter.[3] When she was seventeen, Coke entered the Slade School of Art, where she continued to study throughout the First World War and where she won a prize for figure composition.[3] In the summer of 1918 Coke submitted some sketches to the British War Memorials Committee for a possible commission. That proposal was rejected but shortly afterwards Muirhead Bone bought two of her watercolours for the Imperial War Museum collection.[4] [5] In 1919 she was elected a member of the New English Art Club.[6]
By the start of World War Two Coke was a popular and well known artist. During the War she received a short-term commission from the War Artists Advisory Committee to depict the work being performed by women in various services.[7] To this end she spent time with the Women's Voluntary Service, the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and also with the Red Cross.[8] One of her paintings was included in the Britain at War exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York which opened in May 1941.[9] By the end of the War, WAAC had acquired eight paintings from Coke.[4] During the War, in 1943, she was elected a member of the Royal Watercolour Society, having previously become an Associate member in 1935.[6]
After the War, Coke taught art at Brighton College of Art until her retirement in 1967.[1] [10]