Description
Object description
image: The interior of a cabin below deck with several wounded sailors, most swathed in bandages, laid out parallel to one
another across the floor. They are tended to by three orderlies and one naval doctor who is standing on the right and has a stethoscope
round his neck. Two of the orderlies are lowering a wounded man on a stretcher to the floor in the background.
Label
This scene of British wounded sailors being tended to during the Battle of Jutland is by the artist Jan Gordon. It was one of four paintings completed by Gordon on behalf of the Imperial War Museum's Royal Navy Medical Section between 1918 and 1919. Each dealt with an aspect of Royal Navy medical activity in a variety of theatres of the First World War.
Gordon was selected owing to his service with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during the First World War, where he helped with the development of Dazzle ship camouflage in 1917. A year prior he and his wife, Cora, had volunteered for hospital service in The Balkans and assisted with the care of wounded Serbian soldiers. Both this and his naval service made Gordon a natural choice for the Royal Navy Medical Section commission though it is likely the artist created HMS Castor with the assistance of photographs, having not witnessed the battle itself.
The subject, HMS Castor, was a light cruiser involved in the Battle of Jutland, which on 31st May 1916 sustained heavy damage from German gunfire, causing 10 casualties. Gordon's painting shows the wounded crew members being brought below deck, each bearing a variety of injuries and corresponding treatments.
Godfrey Jervis 'Jan' Gordon would later become a cultural phenomenon in the 1920s working as an artist, author and traveller in creative partnership with his wife, Cora. Styling themselves the 'two vagabonds', the Gordons spent the 1920s and 1930s travelling across Europe on foot, by bicycle or by motorbike, and recording their experiences in a series of popular books. Gordon also undertook art criticism, including a number of articles on 'war art' during the First World War, this he did under the pseudonym, 'John Salis'.
History note
Imperial War Museum, Royal Naval Medical Section