Mervyn Peake applied to become an official war artist during the Second World War but he was refused and was finally invalided out of the service in 1943. On his release he was commissioned to go to Birmingham to do a series of drawings and paintings in a glass-blowing factory, manufacturing cathode ray tubes for use in the war. This subject was a great source of inspiration to Peake and resulted in a large oil, a poem 'The Glassblowers', together with many studies and drawings
(See Maeve Gilmore, Durham Museum and Art Centre Exhibition Catalogue, 1980, intro)