Henry Tonks

Henry Tonks was the first, and perhaps most significant, of the early systematic Illustrators of record associated with plastic surgery. Today he is best known as the creator of 69 evocative and iconic pastel illustrations depicting injured servicemen treated by Harold Gillies during World War 1.

Gillies first encountered Tonks during 1916, at the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot, when he was already celebrated within the art world. Before the first World War, he had taught at the Slade School of Art in London, tutoring other artists who would become notable for their wartime works, including Sir William Orpen, and much later when made Professor there, Orpen’s daughter Diana (“Dickie”). Meeting Tonks in the orderlies room, Gillies suggested to him that he should make illustrations of the jaw and face cases he was working on before and after surgical treatment, and for the purposes of record.

Tonks became an artist of record, a graphic historian of World War I and an more general artist of note. Many of his works are owned by the Tate Gallery. Early experience of the conflict in Northern France led Tonks to produced acclaimed works in pastel such as “The Saline Infusion”, now held by the Imperial War Museum. He went on to become the official artist both at the Cambridge and Sidcup plastic surgery centres. Not only did he complete many pencil drawings recording Gillies’ procedures, he created the series of 69 pastel heads, now part of the Royal College of Surgeons Collection. Later he contributed formal illustrations for Gillies’ book, “Plastic Surgery of the Face” published in 1920. 

All the images of Tonks and his works are reproduced with the permission of the Royal College of Surgeons and under Creative Commons licence by the Imperial War Museum, Tate and National Portrait Galleries.