Top Scots Artist Has a Brush With City Heroine Elsie Inglis
By GARETH EDWARDS
John Bellany’s paintings of war-time nurse set for Paris
HE is a world-renowned artist who hit the headlines for paintings of the hospital staff who helped him recover from a liver transplant.
Now John Bellany has turned his brush to capturing a different nursing figure – the war-time heroine Elsie Inglis, who was dubbed Edinburgh’s Florence Nightingale.
Bellany, 65, has created a series of paintings for a touring exhibition about Dr Inglis, which will be unveiled later this month in Paris.
It is hoped to eventually bring the works back to Edinburgh for a major exhibition exploring her work, and the role of women volunteers during the First World War.
The works by East Lothian-based Bellany – who painted a series of pictures depicting his liver transplant at Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, 20 years ago – include a portrait of Dr Inglis based on a famous photo of her taken at Royaumont Abbey in France.
The travelling exhibition also includes more than 100 images by leading sculptors for a proposed memorial to Dr Inglis, which it is hoped will be placed on the Royal Mile by 2011. Fundraising for the memorial is still ongoing.
Ian McFarlane, chairman of the Scottish Women’s Hospital Committee, said Dr Inglis fully deserved her place among the city’s most famous people.
“There are, I think, only two memorials to women in Edinburgh, but Dr Inglis would be fitting person to be the third,” he said.
“We are still looking to raise funds, and we know that we have the support of Edinburgh Council and the Scottish Government for this.
“It is great to get the support of an artist like John Bellany, who has quite a history with painting hospitals and hospital staff.”
The Bellany paintings were commissioned by the SWHC and also depict the many staff who worked with Dr Inglis at the Scottish Women’s Hospital movement, which she set up in 1914.
The SWH set up field hospitals and saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of servicemen.
The travelling exhibition will open at the British Consulate in Paris later this month, when Mr Bellany’s paintings will be officially unveiled.
It is hoped to tour the exhibition around all of the European countries where the SWH worked, before it is staged in Edinburgh.
MERCY MISSION OF THE WOMAN THE GOVERNMENT TOLD TO ‘GO HOME’
DR INGLIS was born in India in 1864, but moved to Edinburgh as a child and became one of the few female doctors in the UK.
Her Scottish Women’s Hospital (SWH) movement was founded in 1914, but was not at first welcomed by the British Government, who told her: “My good lady, go home and sit still.” Undeterred, the SWH opened its first 200-bed auxiliary hospital at the 13th century Abbaye de Royaumont in France and throughout the First World War it provided nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers and cooks for medical units throughout Europe.
It is thought that more than 300,000 Allied soldiers owed their lives to the organisation.
Dr Inglis died in 1917 from cancer, and after the Second World War the SWH disbanded, with the remaining funds used to build the now-closed Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital in Edinburgh.
There is a small plaque honouring Dr Inglis fixed to St Giles’ Cathedral on the Royal Mile, where she lay in state after dying, before receiving – as the ultimate recognition of her achievements – a full military funeral.
(c) 2008 Evening News; Edinburgh (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.