Renal cancer in a 68-year old man with haematuria and adenomatous prostatic disease: kidney and section showing highly malignant carcinoma. It has been completely replaced with white tumour tissue and yellowish necrosis. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1951.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1951.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache ; sheet 22 x 27.3 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.

Typed accompanying note with patient history and examination results describes right kidney through intravenous urography. Its normal appearance and outline was lost in a large soft tissue mass, with calcific opacity in the renal pelvis. Hospital pathological report describes tumour as lobulated on the outer surface, over which are many fibro-fatty adhesions Bears number: 258/1951

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 34319i

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.