Henry Tonks

Henry Tonks
Henry Tonks, photograph by George Charles Beresford, 1902
Born	9 April 1862 (1862-04-09) Solihull, England
Died	8 January 1937 (1937-01-09) (aged 74) Chelsea, London
Occupation	British artist

Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher.

He was one of the first British artists to be influenced by the French Impressionists; he exhibited with the New English Art Club, and was an associate of many of the more progressive artists of late Victorian Britain, including James McNeill Whistler, Walter Sickert, John Singer Sargent and George Clausen.

Tonks was born in Solihull. His family owned a brass foundry in Birmingham. He was educated briefly at Bloxham School, followed by Clifton College in Bristol, and then studied medicine at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton (1882–85) and the London Hospital in Whitechapel (1885–88). He became a house surgeon at the London Hospital in 1886, under Sir Frederick Treves. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1888 and moved to the Royal Free Hospital in London. He taught anatomy at the London Hospital medical school from 1892.

From 1888 he studied in the evenings at Westminster School of Art, under Frederick Brown. He exhibited paintings with the New English Art Club from 1891 and became a member of the Club in 1895.