A medical missionary attending to a sick African. Oil painting by Harold Copping, 1916.

Healer

An idealised white missionary, guided by Christ standing behind him, applies western medical knowledge to the healing of a sick African child. The missionary has a medicine chest identical in type to the Tabloid medicine chests which the firm of Burroughs Wellcome made for explorers and missionaries. In the foreground is the discarded African surgical instrument, the horn (used for cupping)

The white missionary resembles Henry Morton Stanley as portrayed in a wood engraving published in the Illustrated London news, 17 August 1872, p. 156

[1916]

1 painting : oil on canvas ; canvas 127 x 101.5 cm

Sheila and Ken Wilson, Finding Harold Copping, Shoreham 2005, p. 117 (reproduced)

Sandy Brewer, 'From darkest England to the hope of the world: Protestant pedagogy and the visual culture of the London Missionary Society', Material religion, 2005, 1: 98-123

Christopher Wright et al., British and Irish paintings in public collections, New Haven and London: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2006, p. 269

Tony Gould (ed.), Cures and curiosities: inside the Wellcome Library, London 2007, p. 196

Wellcome Library no. 535948i

Harold Copping (1863-1932) was a London painter of domestic scenes and figure subjects; also book illustrator. He studied at the RA schools and won the Landseer scholarship. He exhibited at the RA, the New Watercolour Society and elsewhere, and became well-known at the time for the Copping Bible, based on his travels in Palestine and Egypt