Henry Tonks

Paintings

Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was an English surgeon, artist and art teacher.

He was one of the first English artists to be influenced by the French Impressionists, he exhibited with the New English Art Club and was an associate of many of the more progressive artists of late Victorian England including James McNeill Whistler, Walter Sickert, John Singer Sargent and George Clausen.

Life and work
Henry Tonks, photograph by George Charles Beresford, 1922

Henry Tonks was born in Birmingham. After being educated at Clifton College he studied medicine at Brighton (1882-85) and London Hospital (1885-1888). After qualifying he became a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital in London.

From 1892 he taught at the Slade School of Art, (from 1918 as Slade Professor of Fine Art) where he became "the most renowned and formidable teacher of his generation".[1] Pupils of Tonks at the Slade included William Lionel Clause,[2] Harold Gilman, Spencer Gore, Augustus John, Mukul Dey, Gwen John, Percy Wyndham Lewis, Stanley Spencer, Rex Whistler, Mark Gertler, David Bomberg, and Isaac Rosenberg.[3] His sarcasm there drove F. M. Mayor's sister Alice to leave before completing her training[4].As a student Paul Nash, recalled Tonks’ withering manner:

"Tonks cared nothing for other authorities and he disliked self-satisfied young men….His surgical eye raked my immature designs. With hooded stare and sardonic mouth, he hung in the air above me, like a tall question mark, moreover… of a derisive, rather than an inquisitive order. In cold discouraging tones he welcomed me to the Slade. It was evident he considered that neither the Slade, nor I, was likely to derive much benefit." [5]

As a qualified surgeon, from 1916 to 1918 Tonks worked for Harold Gillies producing pastel drawings recording facial injury cases at Aldershot and the Queen's Hospital, Sidcup[6], a contribution recognised in the exhibitions "Faces of Battle" at the National Army Museum in 2008[7] and "Henry Tonks: Art and Surgery" at the Strang Print Room in 2002.[8] Tonks was an Official War Artist towards the end of the Great War and accompanied John Singer Sargent on tours of the Front. In August 1918 they both witnessed a field of wounded men near Le Bac du Sud, Doullens, which became the basis for Sargent’s vast canvas, Gassed. [9]

Notes and references

   1. ^ "Tonks, Henry" The Oxford Dictionary of Art. Ed. Ian Chilvers. Oxford University Press, 2004.
   2. ^ CLAUSE, William Lionel in Who Was Who 1920–2007 online, accessed 6 May 2008
   3. ^ Lynda Morris, "Tonks, Henry (1862–1937)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 , accessed 23 Aug 2007
   4. ^ Janet Morgan in The Rector's Daughter by F. M. Mayor, reprinted 2009 p xiii
   5. ^ Anthony Bertram (1955) Paul Nash, the Portrait of an Artist (Faber and Faber) p.39.
   6. ^ VH Ward, 'Henry Tonks - The Facial Injury Artist', British Dental Journal, VOLUME 187, NO. 8, OCTOBER 23 1999
   7. ^ Faces of Battle site
   8. ^ Catalogue details for "Henry Tonks: Art and Surgery"
   9. ^ Paul Gough (2009) ‘A Terrible Beauty’: British Artists in the First World War (Sansom and Company) pp.198-199.

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