Angiomatous melanoma in a fourteen year old girl: detail showing nipple like tumour, with swelling on innner side of right calf: full size detail with pen and ink sketch around. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1950.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1950.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache and black ink ; sheet 36.2 x 26.8 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.

Full size detail, accessary nipple, calf, <...> aged 14 years, 19.5.50 Lettering inscribed in black ink as key, typed accompanying note on patient history explains appearances were very suggestive of an accessary nipple which had been present since birth. It was later removed and no evidence of malignancy was found Bears number:200/1950

Closed until 01/01/2035

Wellcome Collection 33780i

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.