Tonks Drawings Conservation Appeal

In July 2008 the Hunterian Museum began a major two-year project to conserve the Tonks drawings, one of the greatest treasures of the College's collection.

Appeal so far...

The total cost of the project is £45,200. The Museum, Libraries and Archives Council have generously awarded this appeal a grant of £20,000 and with £17,853 already generously received by individual and trust supporters of the project which at the beginning of February 2010 leaves £7347.00 remaining to be found from other sources.

The College would like to offer sincere thanks to the following Charitable Trusts who have generously contributed to this appeal.

• The Idlewild Trust
• The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust
• The Brinsley Ford Charitable Trust
• The Radcliffe Trust.

If you would like to make a donation to the continuing preservation of the Tonks Collection please download and complete and return the donation form.

Drawing to a close - February 2010 update

The final phase of the conservation of the Tonks drawings is now underway. Forty eight drawings have now been conserved and remounted in archive-quality frames. The final batch of twenty-four drawings has been despatched to conservator Roy Graf for treatment, in the hope that they will be completed by the end of March.

Some challenges lie in store: among the drawings to be conserved is at least one which contains a previously hidden portrait on the reverse of the sheet. To accommodate this, a special mount is being designed which will allow the framed drawing to be viewed from both sides.

The conservation project has already yielded results in terms of exhibition – the drawings loaned to the Wellcome Trust and the Deutsches Hygiene Museum have now returned, but other loans are likely in future – and in terms of research. For many years our ability to show the drawings to researchers has been limited by their condition. Now the conserved and re-framed drawings are much more easily viewed, and in the last six months have been examined by visitors ranging from sixth-form art students to leading scholars of art history.

 

Simon Chaplin
Director of Museums & Special Collections

The final stretch - July 2009 update

The second phase of the Tonks Conservation project is now underway. A further group of sixteen drawings has been delivered to Roy Graf of Plan Conservation, who is undertaking the work on behalf of the College.

The nature of the drawings means that their cleaning and repair is a painstaking and delicate task. Each drawing has been photographed before treatment, firstly in its mount, then with the mount removed, and finally in detail to show areas that require cleaning or stabilisation. Some drawings require more work than others, but common problems include:

• original sheets being pasted on to acidic backing boards
• use of animal glues and other accretions around the edges of the drawings
• discolouration and damage to the drawings themselves.

To deal with these problems, Roy has dry cleaned the areas surrounding the drawings using different density erasers and powdered rubber. Backings have to be removed gradually using scalpels and a thin spatula knife, while residual adhesive and fibre is softened using localised dampening, applications of Laponite (an absorbent chemical) and a steam probe. Acidic stains caused by the old mounts are reduced using neutralising solutions, and small areas of surface damage diffused and broken down with a fine brush.

Once completed, the drawings are hinged into acid-free mounts in their original sets of four, and placed into frames fitted with low-reflection laminated glass. The frames are designed to be suitable for transport and display, meaning that we won’t have to worry about them being re-framed for future exhibitions.

The new frames are larger than the old ones, so the conserved drawings are better spaced, and the mounts no longer cut off important information (like soldiers’ names) which are often written in the margins.

Aside from the drawings which have gone on display at the Wellcome Collection and now the Deutsches Hygiene Museum, the remainder have been re-housed in our museum store, where they are placed on open picture racking so that they can be viewed by researchers. Once the project is completed some of the drawings will also be displayed in the Hunterian Museum.

Simon Chaplin,
Director of Museums & Special Collections

Half way there - February 2009 update

The first phase of the Tonks Conservation Project is now complete. So far 32 of the 72 drawings have been cleaned and remounted into new frames. In addition we have purchased frames and mounts for the remaining 40 drawings which will be treated in stages over the next 12 months.

Most of the conserved drawings are currently in store, but some have already been out on loan to the Wellcome Collection’s War and Medicine exhibition. They will travel on to Dresden where the exhibition will open at the Deutsches Hygiene Museum later in the year.

A forgotten face - September 2008 update

The project has already resulted in an exciting new find. Hidden from view on the reverse of one of the drawings is a previously unknown portrait. It shows Private TJ Guthrie of the 1st Canterbury Regiment of the New Zealand expeditionary force. Guthrie arrived at Sidcup in May 1917 and underwent two operations by Gillies, including an osteoperiosteal graft to the mandible. It is possible that more portraits are still hidden.

^{(Above: Tonks pastels with overlay removed to show separate drawings placed overlapping).}

^{(Above: Drawing lifted to show hinges, with evidence of old mounting adhesive, dirt and either uncompleted draft portrait or images created by past sandwiching on reverse (does not match any other in collection).}

About the collection

The Tonks Collection is a powerful reminder of the devastating human toll of the Great War, and of the pioneering surgical innovations which it spawned. Between 1916 and 1918 the artist Henry Tonks recorded the work of the surgeon Harold Gillies and his colleagues at Queen Mary’s Hospital (QMH) in Sidcup as they struggled to rebuild the shattered faces of some of the thousands of young men injured in battle. The collection consists of 72 pastel portraits of patients treated by Gillies and his team. Some are single portraits; others combine to show the same patient at different stages of treatment. Many are shocking in their depiction of the terrible injuries suffered, but all are characterised by an astonishing sensitivity which reflects the dedication and care given by the medical staff at QMH.

Tonks and Gillies

Henry Tonks was uniquely qualified to take on the role of Gillies’ assistant. Originally trained as a surgeon, Tonks had qualified FRCS in 1888 before abandoning medicine to follow a career as an artist. As a teacher at the Slade School in London Tonks developed his interest in life drawing, building on the anatomical expertise acquired during his early career. At the start of the First World War Tonks returned to service as a medical orderly, before being appointed an artist to a new unit set up by Gillies to deal specifically with facial injuries. He was one of several artists, sculptors and photographers called upon by Gillies, who recognised the value of combining different mediums to provide a more rounded record of his patients. In this – as in much else – Gillies was a pioneer: today his work at QMH is regarded as a pivotal period in the development of modern plastic surgery. As well as important technical innovations in operative technique, anaesthesia and nursing Gillies also recognised the importance of psychological care. The Tonks Collection, which is simultaneously a technical record of surgical progress and a series of highly personal portraits of individual patients, is therefore a fitting record of this ground-breaking approach.

About the project

The drawings are works in pure pastel, drawn without scale, squaring or construction lines directly from the life. The drawings are heavily worked, with layer upon layer applied to obtain saturation of colour and depth. Although they have in the past been stored and displayed in less than ideal conditions there has been relatively little surface abrasion and rubbing and, despite the fragile nature of the medium, the drawings have retained the rich texture and lustre that gives them a powerful emotive and aesthetic quality. However the drawings are at risk from other threats: most are mounted onto acidic board and over half have been fully pasted onto their mounts. The acidity in these mounts is the primary cause of concern. A number of works already show staining, foxing or darkening resulting from contact with the mounts, and will deteriorate further over time. Because of the fragile nature of the pastels such changes are not reversible, and if not addressed these historic images will be permanently degraded. The collection is the most regularly requested item for loan exhibitions and once conserved will be made widely available to other institutions and galleries as well as being displayed in the Hunterian Museum. 

Treatment

Rescuing the drawings is an expensive and labour-intensive process. The drawings need to be dismantled from their present mount system and the impure backing boards carefully lifted and scraped away from the reverse of the paper. Once each drawing is free it can then be checked for chemical neutrality and stability, and any weak areas repaired and supported using fine Japanese papers and neutral starch paste. Finally, each drawing will be hinged with archival tape into acid-free mount board and placed into new frames suitable for storage and temporary display. Each stage of the process will be fully documented. The work will be carried out by Roy Graf, a professional paper conservator who has carried out numerous projects for the College over the past 15 years.

If you would like to make a donation to the preservation of the Tonks Collection please download and complete and return the donation form.

Thank you for your interest in our appeal.