SKU: 3940
Henry Tonks
(1862 - 1937)
Stoking the fire – circa 1900
£975
Private Collection
Henry Tonks (1862 - 1937)
Size:
Height – 50.5cm
Width – 35.5cm
The First World War created major problems for the Army’s medical services.
Ideally, the wounded first made it to a Regimental Aid Post, then on to
a mobile Advanced Dressing Station. Here, often in appaling conditions,
injuries might be cleaned and dressed, injections given and emergency
amputations carried out.The next stop was a Casualty Clearing Station
(CCS), where more substantial aid could be given several miles behind
the front line.
In 1918, the Ministry of Information
commissionedTonks to paint a large single picture, An Advanced Dressing
Station in France, now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum (see
picture below), for which this is a study. Tonks had been both a surgeon
and art teacher at the Slade before the war. In the early years of the
war he was a civilian doctor in France and Italy. In 1916 he joined the
Royal Army Medical Corps, working in Sidcup with Sir Harold Gillies, one
of the pioneers of plastic surgery).
A series of related drawings are in the collection of the Hunterian Museum, (Royal College of Surgeons, London) and are considered one of the greatest treasures of the College’s collection. The collection consists of 72 pastel portraits of patients treated by Gillies and his team. Some are single portraits; others combine to show the same patient at different stages of treatment. Many are shocking in their depiction of the terrible injuries suffered, but all are characterised by an astonishing sensitivity. The drawings are works in pure pastel, drawn without scale, squaring or construction lines directly from the life. The drawings are heavily worked, with layer upon layer applied to obtain saturation of colour and depth.
Henry Tonks was uniquely qualified to take on the role of Gillies’ assistant. Originally trained as a surgeon, Tonks had qualified FRCS in 1888 before abandoning medicine to follow a career as an artist. As a teacher at the Slade School in London Tonks developed his interest in life drawing, building on the anatomical expertise acquired during his early career. At the start of the First World War Tonks returned to service as a medical orderly, before being appointed an artist to a new unit set up by Gillies to deal specifically with facial injuries. He was one of several artists, sculptors and photographers called upon by Gillies, who recognised the value of combining different mediums to provide a more rounded record of his patients. In this ‚Äì as in much else ‚Äì Gillies was a pioneer: today his work at QMH is regarded as a pivotal period in the development of modern plastic surgery. As well as important technical innovations in operative technique, anaesthesia and nursing Gillies also recognised the importance of psychological care. The Tonks Collection, which is simultaneously a technical record of surgical progress and a series of highly personal portraits of individual patients, is therefore a fitting record of this ground-breaking approach.
About the project
Painter, teacher and surgeon, born in Solihull, West Midlands. He began to study medicine in 1880 and by 1888 was appointed Senior Medical Officer at Royal Free Hospital, London. He has also by this time begun to study painting with Fred Brown at the Westminster School of Art in his spare time. In 1891, he commenced exhibiting at the NEAC and continued until 1930. In 1892, he was appointed Assistant Professor at the Slade School of Art, London and in 1905 held his first solo exhibition at the Carfax Gallery.
He published Elementary Propositions in Painting and Drawing in 1910 and the following year moved to Vale Avenue, Chelsea where he was to spend the rest of his life. During World War I Tonks combined his medical and artistic skill by working on the by then evolving skills of plastic surgery and was also appointed an Official War Artist. From 1918 until his retirement a dozen years later he held the position of Slade Professor of Fine Art. A year before his death he was afforded the almost unique opportunity of a retrospective exhibition at the Tate Gallery, rarely offered an artist in his lifetime. A consummate draughtsman he is responsible for nurturing countless fine British painters from the early and mid-20th century. Examples of his war works are in the collection of the IWM with others in the collection of Hull University and Museums Sheffield. His son was the artist Myles Tonks.
With thanks to artbiogs.co.uk
