Coloured chalks, 36 by 25 cm

Provenance: Winifred Knights

The present work appears to be a study for a figure on a stretcher in the centre of Tonks's submission to the British War Memorial Committee in 1918. As both a painter, drawing master and surgeon, Tonks was the obvious choice to attempt a medical subject matter. An Advance Dressing Station in France, 1918 now in the Imperial War Museum (cat.Art.IWM ART 1922) shows a scene in the midst of a German offensive of 1918. To the foreground are injured and bandaged Allied troops, based on Tonks's own observations as a medic with the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First World War.