Occupational Medicine 2015;65:180–181
doi:10.1093/occmed/kqv026
Art and Occupation
Dame Barbara Hepworth, Prelude II 1948
Monochrome figures—a scrubbed and gowned surgical
team in an operating theatre—loom out of a hazy blue like
a religious scene from a Renaissance grisaille by Giotto or
Brueghel. Two nurses have prepared the patient’s alabaster
back and buttocks. One nurse crouches by the right thigh,
eyes closed, head devoutly bowed; the other stands at the
shoulders and indicates with her hand (ecce homo) that the
patient is ready. The surgeon gazes wondrously at his left
hand, contemplating the task ahead. On the right, a technician adjusts the main theatre light to illuminate the operation site, bathing the lower half of the picture in a golden
glow. Next to the technician a medical assistant waits,
hands clasped, eyes closed, in quiet reflection. Behind the
surgeon a nurse wearing white boots approaches with the
antiseptic solution to ‘prep’ the patient’s marble skin. To
her right, another nurse (possibly the artist) grips an unidentified object tightly to her waist.
The image (oil and pencil on panel 39.1 × 49.7 cm) is
taken from an operating theatre at the Princess Elizabeth
Hospital Exeter, to which the orthopaedic surgeon
Norman Capener had invited sculptor Barbara Hepworth
and where a few years earlier he had treated Hepworth’s
daughter for osteomyelitis. The artist spent up to 10
hours in theatre taking copious notes with a small sterile notepad and pen [1] and made preliminary drawings
away from the hospital. Then, in her studio at St. Ives, she
© Bowness, Hepworth Estate and Image: © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Occupational Medicine.
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Art and Occupation 181
developed the sketches into coloured, textured compositions—pencil drawing over and into pseudo-gesso ground
of roughly applied enamel paint, white lead and chalk over
which colour was rubbed or painted and abraded [2].
Hepworth went on to draw ENT surgeon Garnett Passe
at the London Clinic in Harley Street and Sir Reginald
Watson-Jones at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital
London [2]. By the time she finished, 2 years later, she
had completed almost 80 drawings [3].
Captivated by the ‘perfection of concentration, movement and gesture’, Hepworth considered the operating
theatre to be ‘an articulated and animated kind of abstract
sculpture’ [4]. The figures are statuesque and the drawings,
dominated by hands and eyes, express a harmony, rhythm,
tenderness and drama, which makes them ‘powerful and
moving in their restraint and intensity’ [5]. Although
Hepworth’s intention was not overtly propagandist, she
was a great supporter of the newly founded British National
Health Service [6] and she portrays the surgical team’s
compassion, duty and social solidarity with a sense of piety.
Barbara Hepworth was born in Wakefield (1903), the
eldest child of civil engineer Herbert and his wife Gerda.
She attended Wakefield Girls’ High School and after
Leeds School of Art where Henry Moore was a fellow
student and went on to study at the Royal College of Art
London (1921–24) together with Moore. Her marriage
(1924) to sculptor Paul Skeaping was not to last, and
by 1931, she and the artist Ben Nicholson were working
and living together [7]. They had triplets in 1934 and
married 4 years later. Just before the outbreak of WWII,
they moved to St. Ives, where Hepworth would live, work
and eventually die some 40 years later.
In her later years, Hepworth was regarded as ‘the
world’s greatest woman sculptor’ [7]. She had begun
creating totally abstract sculpture as early as 1934 but
with little commercial success [7]. However, by the early
1950s, commissions started to appear and her profile
rose both at home and abroad. Her largest and probably
most prestigious work was Single Form (1961–64), a 20
foot high abstract bronze in the UN Plaza, New York [8].
Hepworth’s continuing concern with man’s role in society and his relationship to nature can also be seen in one
of her last works, Family of Man (1970) at the Yorkshire
Sculpture Park, Wakefield [8]. At the time of her death
(1975) in an accidental fire at her Trewyn Studio, she
was working on two multipart marbles [9]. This was not
the first fire but Barbara, now frail with throat cancer
and living alone, was in the habit of retiring to bed with
a nightcap and a cigarette [10]. A plain, simple, rounded
slate headstone ‘Barbara Hepworth 1903–1975’ marks
her grave at Longstone Cemetery two miles south-east
of St. Ives. The studio became the Barbara Hepworth
Museum and Sculpture Garden [11].
Orthopaedic surgical teams face many hazards
in the increasingly sophisticated operating theatre,
including blood-borne pathogens, sharps, radiation,
diathermy, noise, biomechanical stress and fatigue
[12]. However, recent reports of their morbidity from
job dissatisfaction and ‘burnout’ suggest that psychosocial factors now outweigh physical risks [13], and
so far, little has been done to identify, evaluate and
control them [14].
Mike McKiernan
e-mail: [email protected]
References
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