Geneste Penrose, MM (1889 - 1974) and Alan Edmund Beeton, MC (1880 – 1942) – artists who worked in a Camouflage Unit on the Western Front WW1

Alan Beeton self portrait

Alan Edmund Beeton was born on 8th February 1880 in Hampstead, London.   His father was Henry Ramie Beeton, a Member of the London Stock Exchange and his mother was Elizabeth Mary Ann Beeton, nee Dibley.  Alan had a sister, Mary, who was born in 1876.

The family bought an estate, “Hammonds” in Checkendon, near Reading in Berkshire,UK and entertained guests at weekend house parties, among the guests was the playwright George Bernard Shaw.

Alan was educated at the Collegiate School, Horton Hall School preparatory school and Charterhouse School, before going on to study at Trinity College, Cambridge.

When the First World War broke out, Alan enlisted in the Infantry as a Private and was then commissioned into the Royal Engineers.  He was posted to a Camouflage Unit, which came under the command of the Royal Engineers (known as the Sappers), who were producing camouflage in a small factory just behind the front-line in Aire near Hazebrouck. For his work, Alan was awarded the Military Cross, was mentioned twice in despatches and awarded the Croix de Guerre. He also found time to do his own work.

Among Alan’s fellow artists in the Camouflage Unite was the woman who was to become his wife.

Geneste Penrose was born in Wiltshire on 3rd September 1889.  Her parents were John Penrose from Devon, a Church of England Minister, and his wife, Jane E. Penrose.  In 1891, Geneste’s father was Vicar of West Ashton Church, Westbury, Wiltshire.  Geneste’s siblings were John, b. 1887 and Mary, b. 1888.

Geneste Penrose self portrait Camouflagae
Unit WW1

Geneste studied art at the Slade in London. She joined the Army and served as a Deputy Administrator on the Western front with the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps, where she was attached to a Camouflage Unit.

Alan and Geneste returned from the war as pacifists, both of them horrified by the whole experience. It bound them together. They were married in 1919.   In 1838, Alan was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Art.  In 1939 Alan and Geneste were living in Henley, Oxfordshire, UK.

Alan died in December 1942 and Geneste died in 1974.

Sources: Find my Past and
http://www.artantiquesappraisals.com/alan_beeton.html

Henry Tonks (1862 - 1937) – British, doctor, artist and art teacher

With thanks to Sergio Sbalchiero for telling me that Henry Tonks served on the Italian Front during the First World War

Henry Tonks self portrait

Henry Tonks was born in Solihull, UK on 9th April 1862. His family owned a brass foundry in Birmingham. He was educated at Bloxham School and Clifton College in Bristol, before going on to study medicine at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton (1882–85) and the London Hospital in Whitechapel (1885–88). He became a house surgeon at the London Hospital in 1886, under Sir Frederick Treves. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1888 and moved to the Royal Free Hospital in London. He taught anatomy at the London Hospital medical school from 1892.

Beginning in 1888, Henry attended evening classes at Westminster School of Art, under Frederick Brown. He exhibited paintings with the New English Art Club from 1891 and became a member of the Club in 1895.  In 1892, Henry became a teacher at the Slade School of Fine Art, thus becoming "the most renowned and formidable teacher of his generation".

During the First World War, Henry resumed his medical career in 1914, working initially at a prisoner of war camp in Dorchester, and then at Hill Hall in Essex. He made pastel drawings of Auguste Rodin and his wife, who were refugees. He served as a medical orderly at a British Red Cross hospital near the Marne on the Western Front in France in 1915, before joining an ambulance unit on the Italian Front.

Henry Tonks "An Advanced Dressing Station, France" 1918

In 1916, Henry was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps and worked for Harold Gillies producing pastel drawings recording facial injury cases at the Cambridge military hospital in Aldershot and the Queen's Hospital, Sidcup. In 1918, Henry was appointed an Official War Artist and accompanied John Singer Sargent on tours of the Western Front. In August 1918, they both witnessed a field of wounded men near Le Bac du Sud, Doullens, which became the basis for Sargent's vast canvas, “Gassed”.  Henry then accompanied the British Expeditionary Force to Archangel in Russia in 1919 as an official war artist.

Henry retired in 1930 declining the offer of a knighthood. An exhibition of his work was held in London at the Tate Gallery in 1936 - the second retrospective at the Tate for a living British artist. He died at his home in Chelsea on 8th January 1937.

Photograph showing Henry Tonks second from the left at The Villa Trento in Dolegnano, Italy - from Imperial War Museum

This amazing website - the link to which was sent to me by Sergio Sbalchero, shows some of the portraits painted by Henry Tonks of serious facial injuries sustained during WW1

http://bizzarrobazar.com/2017/03/30/henry-tonks-e-i-ragazzi-senza-volto/?fbclid=IwAR0Sg-vRVg4zW94AgSYKr1tvamcSpO57TU_WZDeTqrd79JCnz5cQ8TEUgWQ