Thread by @NGIreland

In celebration of all the healthcare workers who are working tirelessly in the fight against #COVID19, today's collection thread will focus on works that depict medical heroes, healing, and medicine.

We'll begin with our Work of the Day, by William John Leech (1881-1968):

A Convent Garden, Brittany (c.1913) is set in the walled garden of the nun's hospital and convent at Concarneau where Leech had convalesced in 1904 having contracted typhoid fever. He visited Concarneau on several occasions between 1903 and 1917.

The subject of this painting is his first wife Elizabeth, who is dressed in the Breton bridal costume, traditionally donned by novices on the day they took their final vows. She seems to float gracefully through the garden as if in a dream.

onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/objects/2616/a…

Next, Robert Ballagh's portrait of Noël Browne (1915-1997), Doctor, Politician and Campaigner, which you can see at the link below.

onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/objects/8745/p…

Appointed Minister for Health in 1948, Browne is best remembered for initiating a far-reaching programme for the eradication of tuberculosis, and legislating for the associated ‘Mother and Child’ scheme.

Intended to provide free medical care for mothers and children under the age of 16, the scheme brought Browne into conflict with Catholic bishops and the medical profession.

Browne’s expression in Ballagh's portrait communicates the resolute character for which he was known.

This watercolour portrait by Erskine Nicol is of Sir William Wilde (1819-1876). Although he would become best-known as the father of Irish writer, Oscar Wilde, William Wilde was a man of notable intellect and intrigue in his own right.

One of three sons of Dr Thomas Wilde, a local doctor in Roscommon who made his house calls on horseback, William was the only child to follow in his father’s medical footsteps, and received his license from the Royal College of Surgeons in 1837.

Wilde specialised in diseases of the eye and ear, and set up a clinic in a stable on Molesworth Street, where he treated the poor free of charge. Later, the clinic moved to an abandoned almshouse in Mark Street and became known as St Mark's Hospital.

He also designed a number of surgical instruments, including 'Wilde's forceps' and 'Wilde's angled snare'. In 1853, he was appointed Surgeon Oculist in Ordinary to the Queen (Victoria at that time) in Ireland, the first position of its kind.

Wilde edited the Irish census for several years and his observations about population and disease were considered to be of the utmost importance.

Image: Thomas Herbert Maguire (1821-1895), Sir William Robert Wills Wilde (1815-1876), Surgeon and Antiquary, Father of Oscar Wilde

Throughout his career, Wilde maintained a keen interest in Ireland’s ancient history, literature and relics. He published a number of works on archaeology and folklore, and during the 1860s, he worked on cataloguing artefacts held in the @RIAdawson antiquarian collection.

Like William Wilde, the English doctor Benjamin Hoadly (1706-1757) wore two hats: he was both a physician and a dramatist.

This portrait of Hoadly from our collection is by William Hogarth (1697-1764), and was completed in 1740.

Hoadly obtained his doctorate in 1728 from Corpus Christ College, Cambridge University, and was elected to the Royal College of Physicians in 1736. He became physician to the Royal family in 1742, and wrote several medical works.

He was a friend of the renowned actor David Garrick, and took a great interest in the theatre. His only printed play was The Suspicious Husband, first performed at Covent Garden in 1747 and later at Drury Lane.

Image: Johann Zoffany (1733-1810), David Garrick (1717-1777), Actor

The Suspicious Husband was well-received, described by critics as “the most popular comedy of the Garrick era at Drury Lane”. A second comedy, The Tatler, was never printed, and was only staged in 1797, some forty years after Hoadly's death.

In Leo Whelan’s The Doctor’s Visit (1916) we get closer to doctor-patient interaction. The painting shows the artist's cousin as a patient in bed in his parent's home in Eccles Street, Dublin.

onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/objects/8629/t…

The artist's mother sits by the bed, and his sister, dressed in the uniform of a Mater Hospital nurse, waits expectantly at the door for the doctor who is about to enter.

This painting won Whelan the Taylor Art Scholarship in 1916.

There a number of depictions of nurses throughout our collection.

The Nurse (1867) shows a nurse visiting a patient at their home. She appears to be cleaning her instruments in the background while the mother strokes the cheek of her sick infant.

onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/objects/5791/t…

Hilda van Stockum's Portrait of a Nurse is a sensitive portrait in black chalk of an unnamed nurse. The slight tilt of her head coupled with her earnest expression suggest that she is in the act of listening to a patient.

onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/objects/18887/…

Irish surgeon Sir Philip Crampton (1777-1858) was co-founder of the Institute for Sick Children in 1821, the first teaching children’s hospital in Ireland and the UK. Its mission was to treat sick children in some of the poorest parts of Dublin.

You can find a memorial to Sir Philip Crampton in Dublin, at the junction of College Street, Pearse Street, and D'Olier Street. It was erected in 1862, and James Joyce makes mention of it in both Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man.

This portrait of Professor Marie Cassidy, the first female State Pathologist in Ireland was commissioned from artist Jack Hickey in 2018 after he won the Gallery's annual Portrait Prize competition.

They are both pictured at the unveiling in November 2018.

Professor Cassidy held the role of State Pathologist in Ireland between 2004 and 2018, and she is Professor of Forensic Medicine at @tcddublin and @RCSI_Irl.

There's a small but very interesting detail relating to healing and medicine in Hugh Douglas Hamilton’s painting of Frederick Hervey (1730-1803) with his Granddaughter Lady Caroline Crichton (1779-1856), in the Gardens of the Villa Borghese, Rome (c. 1790).

In the background, we get a glimpse of the Temple of Aesculapius. Aesculapius, son of Apollo, was the Greek god of healing and medicine.

The temple was designed by the architect Mario Asprucci (1764-1804), who later built Ickworth, Hervey's grand country mansion in England.

Thank you to all the healthcare workers who are working so hard for all of us. We are in awe of you. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.
👏❤️