The Night Watch: Guardroom at Poperinghe Barracks 1943, 1943
Harry Blacker, known professionally as 'Nero', was born to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in Whitechapel, London, England in 1910. He spent five years as an apprentice learning printing and engraving and attended evening class at the Sir John Cass School of Art in Aldgate East. His first freelance commissions were for the Radio Times and Fleet Street newspapers, and he went on to design posters for Shell-Mex, BP, London Transport, and the Post Office, becoming known as the "Giles" of Anglo-Jewry, after the renowned Daily Express cartoonist. He contributed cartoons to publications including Punch, Liliput, the Jewish Chronicle, the Daily Express and The Stage, among others. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Artillery, also editing and illustrating the camp newspaper. Later, he also painted landscapes in watercolour and pastel and had a major exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1980. He died in London, England on 27 June 1999.
