Drawing of patients asleep in the shelter, by Paul Drury. Drawing depicting patients sleeping in bunks in an air raid shelter. Foreground features image of man sleeping on the bottom bunk, facing left with both hands tucked next to his face. Above him in the foreground we see the bed frame and in the top left, another patient's foot and blanket dangling, however the foot is distinct and different to the other image on a similar theme, E2020.0031.31. In the midground are three further patients, one lying asleep with his bandaged, amputated right arm resting outside the sheets. Two more are leaning up in bed, one (on left) appears to have a bandage aroud his head. More figures and bunks can be seen in the background. Squared off in ink.

Paul Drury is best known as an accomplished etcher of portraits and landscapes. Part of the etching revival in the 1920s, Drury became head of the Etching Department at Goldsmiths from 1946 and President of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers from 1970. Relatively unknown, however, is his work during the Second World War at Queen Mary’s Hospital (QMH) Roehampton, which was founded in 1915 to cater to the huge numbers of amputee soldiers injured in the First World War.

Drury was posted to QMH as an assistant in the plaster workshop of the artificial limb unit in 1939, where he worked until the end of the war. Whilst there, he obtained permission from the War Artists Advisory Committee to make records of his experiences, producing a mix of finished and preparatory drawings, etchings, paintings and pastels that are represented in this collection of works. Through these, Drury captured the everyday activities of technicians, doctors and nursing staff alongside the wounded themselves, showing us a little of their personalities and emotions in portraits and group scenes. The works also introduce the wider experiences of convalescence at QMH during the war, including sheltering patients during air-raids, treatments for wounded limbs and the card games played to pass the time.