‘Leslie Cole, who trained under Bawden and Ravilious at the Royal College of Art in the 1930s, produced some of the finest paintings when appointed an Official War Artist, and his watercolours are especially interesting, many in a Ravilious mould. Cole travelled through Germany (recording the scenes of horrific trauma at Belsen a week after its liberation), France, Malta and the Far East, where he recorded the action in Borneo and Singapore, a theatre of the war largely forgotten by Europeans today. Cole’s work was the equal of any other war artist, and yet he was unable, for personal or other reasons, to maintain the momentum after the war, when he seems to have slid very slowly downhill, and his early promise was unfulfilled.’