© Barnett Freedman estate

As a war artist, Freedman worked initially with the British Expeditionary Force in France, recording the construction of defences north of Arras. Critical of the difficulty in accessing his subject matter however, Freedman regularly aggravated his employers and was initially dismissed by the War Office in 1940 with the exasperated comment that ‘It is really more important to keep out the Germans than to take in Mr Barnett Freedman’. With the Admiralty, Freedman made illustrations of HMS Repulse and HM Submarine Tribune. In 1944 he went to Portsmouth headquarters of the Allied forces to document the final preparations for D-Day – an unfinished study for which is in the Ben Uri Collection. Also unfinished, Soldiers in Town depicts off-duty Allied soldiers walking through a Northern French town. The seemingly relaxed atmosphere, with children playing around them, perhaps anticipates the end of the war. Freedman also produced illustrations and typography for wartime information posters and commercial illustrations, particularly book jacket designs for the publisher Faber and Faber in London and for the Limited Edition Club, New York. He also produced posters for notable companies including J. Lyons & Co. Ltd., and Arthur Guinness & Sons Ltd.. As a commercial and industrial designer, Freedman also worked for William Macdonald & Sons (Biscuits) Ltd., Shell-Mex, BP, Elstree Film Studios and London Passenger Transport Board. He also designed a number of commemorative stamps for the General Post Office, including a George V Jubilee issue.