Tonks' Art

Henry Tonks was not only notable for having illustrated Harold Gillies’ work during the First World War. He was an artist of some renown even before that conflict.

It was on a trip to Dresden shortly following his qualification as a doctor that he resolved to re-make himself as an artist. He applied, and was accepted into the art school in Westminster run by Fred Brown, from which point his medical endeavours were gradually overtaken by a pursuit of the artistic. When Brown, a founding member of the “New English Art Club”, was appointed professor of fine art at University College (the Slade School) Tonks readily accepted a post as his assistant.

Tonks quickly gained prominence in London’s literary and artistic society, his friends being author George Moore, and artists, Wilson Steer, D.S.McColl, St John Harrison and Walter Sickert. He produced many fine works in mixed media, mainly portraiture or human subjects, including “A girl with a Parrot” in 1893.

The outbreak of the first World War changed everything. In 1914, volunteering his medical services to a small convalescent hospital in Essex, he managed to paint both the sculptor Pierre Auguste Rodin and his wife when they became refugees there. These now belong to the Tate Gallery.

In 1915 he volunteered to go to France helping at the Red Cross clearing station where he made the preliminary sketches for his pastel “The Saline Infusion, an incident in the Red Cross hospital d’Arc en Barrois”. As a wartime artist he went on to produce other works of note whilst deployed in Northern France and Russia, notably the oil on canvass “An Advanced Dressing Station” and “Russian Solidiers Dancing with Peasant Woman” both from 1918. Following the Great War, Tonks continued at the Slade until his retirement in 1930.

Today the Imperial War Museum owns 11 Tonks paintings, the Tate Gallery own 12, whilst the National Portrait Gallery have several of his drawings, watercolours and photographic images taken of him in 1902 by George Beresford.

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