In secret service: Suzanne Severn and the National Gallery’s wartime photographic missions, 1939–40

Based on personal correspondence from the Suzanne Severn Archive, this article examines the contribution of women photographers to the National Gallery’s wartime preservation work during 1939–40. Fifty-five letters exchanged between Suzanne Severn and her husband, Simon Archer, document six photographic assignments—five to Wales and one to Wigan, Lancashire—including repeated returns to Penrhyn Castle and Bangor to photograph evacuated paintings whilst she concealed her marriage in October 1939 to remain in post under Civil Service marriage bar regulations. Working alongside fellow photographer Marjorie Rickeard, Severn documented under challenging wartime conditions the National Gallery’s collections when in their temporary homes at Penrhyn Castle, the National Library of Wales, and Haigh Hall. These letters expose forms of women’s cultural labour that institutional archives largely obscure, showing how personal life, professional work, and wartime crisis operated simultaneously rather than as separate spheres. By drawing on family archives alongside institutional records, the article reconstructs the circumstances under which this preservation work was carried out and what it cost those who performed it.