Section of distorted heart showing the inter-ventricular defect where the ductus arteriosus has failed to close up after in a 43-year old woman with pleurisy and congestive heart failure. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1948.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1948.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache, pencil and black ink ; sheet 24.4 x 30.5 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.

lung, liver, heart, inf<erior> vena cava, r<ight> atrium, trachea, ductus arteriosus, aorta, l<eft> pulmonary a<rtery>, l<eft> ventricle Lettering in black ink as key, accompanying typed note with patient history reveals repaeated haemoptyses and hypertrophy with serious thrombosis in left pulmonary artery Bears number: 106/1948

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 32479i

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.