| Blanche Lavallée was one of over 3,000 nurses who served in the Canadian Army Medical Corps during the First World War. She enlisted in March 1915 at Montréal and served primarily at the Canadian military hospital at Saint-Cloud, outside Paris. In this sensitive portrait, she wears the starched veil and the blue uniform that earned the nurses the nickname "blue birds." English artist Richard Mathews (1870-1955) also served in the Medical Corps, but in civilian life, he specialized in society portraits and magazine illustration, making his career in England. Coloured chalk on paper
C-017368 |