For Rudolf and Viola, the Second World War was a period of “intense anxiety and fear” as they lived in Kent under Doodlebug Alley “with German buzz bombs flying overhead daily […] dogfights […] over their heads” and Viola never knowing if Rudolf would return after she kissed him goodbye each morning. Significantly, where Rudolf regularly set out reflected his naturalized citizenship of the state that had previously labeled and imprisoned him as an enemy alien, but which he now chose to serve as it faced another war. He had enlisted as a Local Army Welfare Officer in the Eastern Command, covering East Anglia and the Central Midland Counties. His duties across this region allowed him to continue painting. His resulting work, which focused on a variety of subjects symbolizing the realities and physical force of the nation at war, stood in stark contrast to the images of captivity he created during the previous war. Although he was never an official war artist, Rudolf documented Britain at war as accurately and meaningfully as the productions of these contemporaries.

1939–40

Rudolf’s earliest wartime works included Homo Sapiens: MCMXL (Figure 5.1), a related piece depicting the same figure holding a gas mask, After the Raid (Figure 5.2) depicting a gas mask hanging from a crossbeam of bombed-out building and Not to be Removed (Figure 5.3), showing lines of barbed wire and concrete bollards along a coastline. The individual and collective grimness of these works—no less their subjects of civil defense, gas warfare and protective masks—echoed the themes of his earlier triptych and holiday cards. Rudolf knew then what was unfolding, and he was now in the throes of living it daily and capturing it through his art, particularly the aforementioned Homo Sapiens: MCMXL.

Homo Sapiens: MCMXL

Rudolf submitted Homo Sapiens: MCMXL for display in the 1940 United Artists Exhibition in Burlington House, supporting the Lord Mayor’s Red Cross and St. John Fund and the Artists’ General Benevolent Institution.