Renal cancer in a 41-year old woman: carcinoma, microscopic view showing cytoplasmic inclusions. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1951.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1951.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache ; sheet 13.6 x 11.9 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.

Accompanied by published case notes, found in British journal of urology, vol. 23, no.3, 1951, pages 263-266, referring to the case illustrated in this watercolour, which was at Glasgow Western Infirmary and which was to be published by D.M. McClure and C.F. Ross in J. Path. Bact., 1951, vol. 63 Bears number: 216/1951

Wellcome Collection 33996i

D.M. McClure and C.F. Ross, 'Two cases of renal carcinoma showing cytoplasmic inclusions', J. Path. Bact., 1951, vol. 63, pp. 719-727

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.

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.