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