During my research in to the history of ophthalmic painting I discovered this fascinating video of Annette Burgess explaining how the paintings are created.
Painting Unknown Worlds
My interest in retinal paintings began while working on the 9th edition of Kanski’s Clinical Ophthalmology. Nestled amongst the scans and fundus photographs are beautify painted illustrations of the back of the eye. The majority, feature a single name, Tarrant, in the bottom hand corner. As I later discovered, this name is widely known throughout ophthalmology and the work is highly revered. I was curious to find out more about the paintings, the person behind the name, and the story of why artists painted these unknown worlds.
My research led me to the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCO) where I met Richard Keeler who guided me through the history of retinal painting and put me in touch with Terence Tarrant. Over a series of phone calls with Terry I uncovered the story of how he became one of the greatest retinal painters.
Tarrant’s story was published in Eye a few weeks before he sadly passed away.
A new respect for retinal artists.
During our conversations I would discuss with Terry the techniques involved in producing a retinal painting. I was curious to understand this process and with his guidance and feedback I produced a series of paintings as I thought it was important to understand how he created the artwork. After many attempts and feedback from Terry he complemented my on how processional the paintings looked. This meant a lot to me. I felt that with my background in art I should be able to produce something half decent but found it was a lot more difficult than I had predicted.
This gave me a whole new respect for the artists who produced these paintings.
The paintings I created formed part of an exhibition which was on display at the eye hospital and raised £1300 for SSNAP.
I have included a few examples below. If you are interested in buying prints or an original painting please get in touch.
Pathology of the Retina poster
Following up from my paper I produced this poster for the RCO. Richard Keeler, the curator of the RCO museum, is the custodian of a collection of Tarrant’s original paintings which are available to view online.
I requested permission to use sections of the original paintings (a few of which are on display below) to produce a compilation of retinal pathology for teaching purposes. I created a blank (pathology free) retina and used Photoshop to add sections from Tarrant’s original paintings
The Cambridge Ophthalmological Symposium
Attending and speaking at the conference was one of the highlights of my career. Cambridge is a fantastic city and staying at St John’s College was amazing (the breakfast was sooo good). I was fortunate that it turned out that the conference was held over 2 of the hottest days of the year so a trip to Jesus Green Lido was essential.
In 2023 I was invited to speak at the Cambridge Ophthalmological Symposium and share my presentation about Tarrant and the history of ophthalmic artists. This was a huge honour! The design of the presentation is inspired by the look and colour schemes from many Wes Anderson films.
The publication ‘Eye’ was previously called the Transactions of Ophthalmological Society for the United Kingdom (TOSUK) and regularly featured meticulous illustrations accompanying the physician’s description. My retina paintings were included on the cover artwork along with my article which felt like the project had come full circle as the pioneers mentioned in the paper had their work featured in this publication.