While detained at the Hutchinson Internment Camp on Isle of Man, jokingly nicknamed the “artists camp” due to the great number of artist detainees, Kurt Schwitters met a host of like-minded characters. The majority of the internees were displaced Germans and Austrians or other opponents of the Nazi regime. For most of his fellow inmates, Schwitters was a household name – at the time of the Weimar Republic he was one of the most famous and controversial artists in Germany.

Since none of the detainees knew how long they would be held by the British government, a host of cultural activities were organised to boost morale and provide distraction. The camp had its own newspaper, a makeshift “university”, lecture evenings and two exhibitions of inmates’ art work. Schwitters was involved in all of these. The exchange of ideas gave him encouragement and boosted his spirits, while also offering a practical benefit: his made-to-order portraits of fellow detainees allowed him to earn money.

The lawyer Fred Uhlmann, for example, paid a sum of five pounds for a portrait painting made by Schwitters in 1940. The German Social Democratic Party member, who was of Jewish ancestry, fled Germany in 1933 and resided in England until 1936. Uhlmann spent six months interned on the Isle of Man as an “alien enemy” of Great Britain. Uhlmann, who was also a painter himself, stated that Schwitters’ portrait of him was “not a work of art but still a good picture and definitely the best of his paintings”.