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Harold Copping's painting 'The Hope of the World' (1914), now lost, showing Jesus Christ talking to a group of children from different continents, was one of the best-known and best-loved paintings in the world. This second painting by him, 'A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African' (1916), which survives in the Wellcome Library, was also widely reproduced and much admired. It shows a white missionary in Africa attending to a sick African. The horn, the instrument used in bloodletting in native African medicine, lies discarded in the foreground, as the missionary doctor applies western medical knowledge to the healing of a sick African child. The missionary has a medicine chest identical in type to the 'Tabloid' medicine chests, which the firm of Burroughs Wellcome made for explorers and missionaries.
Title
A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African
Date
1916
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 127 x W 101.5 cm
Accession number
535948i
Acquisition method
purchased
Work type
Painting
Inscription description
Harold Copping