This placid picture At the Billet’s Open Window, San Severo depicts a moment of quiet in the midst of war.
It is one of around 50 drawings, collages and watercolours now on offer at Abbott & Holder which were completed in 1944 by Percy Drake Brookshaw (1907-93) while taking rest and recuperation in Italy.
Brookshaw was an RAF aerial photography interpreter during the Second World War but none of the works on offer here depict his active service. Instead, they record his daily activities and those of the men around him as they wrote letters, sketched, read and sunbathed.