Amputee and seated patient sorting bandages with crutches behind

Sketch of amputee and seated patient sorting bandages with crutches behind by Paul Drury. Graphite sketch of two male figures and a head. Figure on left is seated in bed with left leg amputation. He is wearing a shirt, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth as he looks down at the bandages held in his hands. Next to him, a second male figure is seated on a chair, looking slightly down and rightward at the bandages he holds. In background are crutches and textiles, and a male head sketch with cigarette. Annotations relating to colour along top half of image.

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.