Portrait of a facial reconstruction patient by Henry Tonks

Sarah Bowerman will deliver a talk entitled Tonks, Gillies, Kennington, Hillary: Art and Facial Reconstructive Surgery in WWI and WWII.

She explains: “Art and surgery worked together as WWI brought, via shrapnel, shells and bullets, facial wounds previously unsurvivable. New Zealand Surgeon Harold Gillies asked artist and Slade Professor Henry Tonks to record his surgeries, and Tonks used the opportunity to record faces as yet unseen. In WWII Eric Henri Kennington was employed by the War Office to paint portraits of heroes from the Navy, the RAF and the Home Guard. In 1942 he gained a private commission to paint Richard Hillary—a survivor of the Battle of Britain, an author and the subject of extensive facial reconstructive surgery. It was his only commission of this kind—of a surgical ‘Guinea Pig’—in over 150 war portraits, and the last he drew of an RAF pilot.”

This talk will contain images of facial injury and surgery.

As usual we will be attempting to livestream the talk (very much at the mercy of the pub’s wifi connection). The link to watch that is https://youtu.be/UznVz7M-DH8.