There has been a close relationship between art and plastic surgery since the early days of the modern specialty. It is telling that Sir Harold Gillies, chose to employ the word ‘art’ in the title of his magnum opus of 1920, ‘The Principles and Art of Plastic Surgery’, indicating the significance of artistic principles in his surgical practice. During the First World War, Gillies collaborated with several talented artists and sculptors, most notably Henry Tonks. Similarly, during the Second World War, Gillies’ distant cousin and protégé Archibald McIndoe, at East Grinstead, enlisted the expertise of a medical artist, Mollie Lentaigne. Arthur Rainsford Mowlem, based at Hill End Hospital, St Albans employed Diana 'Dickie' Orpen, daughter of the esteemed Irish painter Sir William Orpen, and a student of the prestigious Slade School of Art under the tutelage of Henry Tonks.

These artists, and their modern equivalents not only produced technical diagrams recording the details of surgical procedures, but also bear witness to the interface of human suffering with the medical world around them, interpreting it in the only way they know – as art. Tonks created the famous collection of graphic pastel portraits capturing the emotions of patients undergoing early reconstructive procedures. Orpen created over 2,500 pencil and pen drawings that depict, in great detail, the surgical procedures carried out by Mowlem and his team, but also a selection of pastels and cartoons of those, often colourful characters, with whom she worked.

Here we present a selection of works from the most prominent professional artists between the first world war and today, contrasting this with the practical post-operatively recorded descriptive diagrams of modern surgeon-artists.

Contributor - Alex Baldwin