Flesh Poems

Henry Tonks and the Art of Surgery

Bibliographic Data

ID21158596
AuthorsSuzannah Biernoff (0000-0002-7684-8783, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume11
Issue1
Pages25-47
Publication date2010-02-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueVisual Culture in Britain (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1471-4787 • E-ISSN: 1941-8361
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14714780903509979
PMID21874121
PMCIDPMC3158130
OpenAlexW2004939339
LanguageEN
Citations received15

This article focuses on Henry Tonks’ pastel studies of wounded First World War servicemen before, after, and during facial surgery. Viewed alongside archival photographs of the same patients from the Cambridge Hospital at Aldershot and The Queen’s Hospital in Sidcup, Tonks’ drawings disturb the conventions both of medical illustration and portraiture: they are discussed here in relation to the visual cultures of modern medicine (in particular nineteenth and twentieth-century traditions of medical illustration and photography) and the artist’s own thoughts on artistic objectivity and beauty. For Tonks, good drawing was tactile: without this sensibility and skill, he believed, the draughtsman’s art was like playing a piano without hearing the notes. In light of Tonks’ wartime collaboration with the surgeon Harold Gillies this paper explores the hypothesis that the history of surgery – and to some extent the history of medical representation – is a history of touch as much as a product of visual practices and conventions

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Beauty · Literature · Poetry · Politics · Sensibility · Visual arts · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · History of Medicine Studies · Medical History and Innovations · Philosophy

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access