Life study sketch of 36-year old woman with breast cancer: showing rapid development of transferable malignant metastatic lesions after radical mastectomy and postoperative irradiation. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1949.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1949.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache and pencil ; sheet 15 x 15.5 cm

Barbara Evelyn Nicholson (1906 – 1978) trained at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1923. She began her artistic career as a medical illustrator and was a founder member of the Medical Artists Association, where she is recorded as serving on an exhibition committee in October 1949. By 1951, she had illustrated G.F. Gibberd, A short textbook of midwifery (2nd ed., London: J. & A. Churchill, 1941) and Philip Wiles, Essentials of orthopaedics (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1949). The Medical Artists Association records last list her, in 1951. In the 1950s her focus moved to botanical subjects and from the late 1950s – 1970s she was a prolific botanical illustrator.

<...>, 12.1.49 Lettering inscribed in pencil, accompanying typed note gives detailed patient history and states nodules with ulceration had formed around old mastectomy scar in particular and that radiograph showed complete destruction of cerivcal vertebrae Bears number: 135/1949

The watercolours and pen and ink drawings held by Wellcome Collection were painted by Barbara Nicholson at Ashford Hospital, Ashford, Middlesex, between 1946 and 1951, at the request of the surgeon Norman Matheson.

Wellcome Collection 32835i

Presented to the Wellcome Institute Library in 1987 by Ashford Postgraduate Medical Centre, as part of a collection of medical illustrations by Barbara E. Nicholson.