Coloured chalks, 35.5 by 38 cm

Provenance: Winifred Knights

Tonks was a trained surgeon and during the First World War served as an RAMC doctor, studying under the eminent plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies. The studies of War injuries he made during his time there are some of the most striking works of art to emerge from a serving British artist. The present work is a study for a larger pastel drawing now in the Imperial War Museum with the full title Saline Infusion: An Incident in the British Red Cross Hospital, Arc-en-Barrois, 1915 (cat: art.IWM art 1918, see below). Tonks was a remarkable painter in pastel - a medium he brought to bear as one of the foremost art masters in early twentieth century British painting. Many of his finest war works were executed in this medium, lending a powerful sensitivity to the sometimes harrowing subject matter.