In 1916, two years after the beginning of the First World War, the British Government introduced general conscription, which automatically enlisted in the Army every man aged 18-40 and resident in Great Britain. This had a life-changing effect on Pellew. He became a conscientious objector, refusing to join the Army on grounds of faith, and was imprisoned for two years. Conscientious objectors like Pellew suffered great hardship in jail and work camps, which was compounded by social stigma and the widespread resentment they endured even after their release. On the other hand, friends and contemporaries of Pellew’s who had become official war artists, such as Paul and John Nash, CRW Nevinson, Wyndham Lewis and Stanley Spencer, were enjoying unprecedented attention and government patronage. The Imperial War Museum, founded in 1917 and opened officially in 1920, had received over two million visitors by November 1921. It is not altogether surprising, then, that John Nash described his close friend Pellew as developing ‘a sense of permanent isolation from which [he] never recovered’.

In his introduction to Pellew’s posthumous solo exhibition at the Assembly House in 1967, John Nash gave what might be the best explanation for his lack of recognition: ‘It would be difficult to find another artist of his promise who deliberately appeared to seek retirement and obscurity. He seemed to possess no burning ambition… He was the most modest and retiring of men and it may be that these very qualities, combined with a lack of contact with his contemporaries, prevented the development of his full potentialities.’