Art Collections Online

A doctor bends over his patient on a pallet bed in a dimly-lit tent, assisted by a nurse. A casualty would be taken here from the trenches by stretcher-bearers, where they could receive treatment and be prepared for transportation to a Casualty Clearing Station.  The tent ropes, creating diagonal lines across the image show Shepperson’s attention to detail as a graphic artist. 

These prints follow the journey of a wounded soldier from the Front Line, through treatment, to convalescence back at home.  The organisers initially asked the artist Henry Tonks (1867-1937), a surgeon before becoming an artist, to respond to the work of the medical services.  However, Tonks found the paper supplied ‘entirely unsympathetic’for drawing and declined.  Shepperson was later commissioned for the subject and produced a very well received series.    

Shepperson was born in Beckenham, Kent, and was a successful water-colourist, pen and ink artist, illustrator and lithographer. Having given up law he studied art in Paris and London. He is well-known for his humorous drawings contributed to the Punch magazine between 1905 and 1920.