Waiting at a service hatch in a huge canteen, a gaggle of women stand chatting, some holding mugs to be filled.

Dressed in drab, practical workwear with heavy-duty boots, their hair is neatly tucked under blue caps. In the foreground, two friends walk, arm-in-arm, looking as if they’re heading off for a good gossip. Others, standing in line, look world-weary.

The scene is a painting called Women’s Canteen At Phoenix Works, Bradford, by artist Flora Lion, who was commissioned to capture scenes of the ‘home front’ during the First World War. Painted in 1918 in oil, the image forms part of a new exhibition of female war artists that offers a glimpse into the vital role Bradford’s women played during wartime.

The exhibition, at Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, is the first for more than 50 years to bring together the works and personal reflections of key female war artists, from the First World War to the Kosovo conflict in 2000.

Phoenix Dynamo Manufacturing in Thornbury was one of a number of factories turned over to munitions manufacture during the First World War, with aircraft, including flying boats, being built on the site. London-born Flora Lion, an established society portrait painter, was given permission by the Ministry of Information to record experiences in the North, and was granted special access to factories in Bradford and Leeds.

The exhibition of more than 100 works by 25 official and unofficial war artists, also features Flora Lion’s painting of the interior of an assembly shed at an aircraft factory. Entitled Building Flying Boats, the painting depicts the workers making flying boats in what is believed to be Belle Vue Barracks, Manningham, where many planes were assembled.

Workers at benches, using planes and scrapers, are hand-manufacturing the individual components for the aircraft, which were used extensively by the British during the First World War for spotting German U-boats by following mathematically-constructed search patterns.

Specialist engineers and craftsmen joiners from a range of firms worked together in small teams to provide the technical expertise required to meet demand. Their jackets are hanging on pegs that run the length of the factory wall.

Reflections from some of the artists provide an insight into how war has shaped their lives, and will highlight the variety of ways that conflict can inform artistic practise.

The exhibition explores artists’ responses to conflict – as eyewitnesses, participants, commentators and as officially-commissioned recorders. And it will illuminate both the constraints and possibilities offered to female artists in wartime.

Sara Bevan, assistant curator for the department of art at the Imperial War Museum in London, says: “The painting is very interesting – firstly you see the clothing, which is unusual for the time but quite common in the factories, and the pose of the two women shows that they are quite confident in their workplace. There’s a feeling of liberation about it.”

Other highlights of the exhibition – which runs until April 19 – include Dame Laura Knight’s The Nuremberg Trial, The Queue At The Fish Shop by Evelyn Dunbar, Mary Kessell’s haunting images of German refugees during the Second World War, and Linda Kitson’s images of the Falklands conflict.

The works are arranged in seven themed sections – in action, under attack, arming, feeding and clothing, parting and loss, nursing and caring, and heroines.

The first official War Artists’ Scheme was set up by the Government in the First World War. Artists continue to be commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to respond to modern conflicts.

l For more about the exhibition, ring (0161) 8364007 or visit north.iwm.org.uk.