After the end of the Second World War, McCance travelled to Lascaux in France, where he saw the world-famous cave paintings. It was this trip, in combination with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which inspired McCance to produce a new series of paintings. Fiercely anti-war since his imprisonment as a conscientious objector during the First World War, this was one of several anti-nuclear paintings McCance made in the 1940s. The devastated landscape in the distance shows the horrific effects of nuclear warfare, whilst the white arched shapes may represent bomb shelters. The reclining figure in the foreground is based on one of the artist’s own sculptures.