Olive Mudie-Cooke (1890-1925) is one of the almost forgotten artists of the First World War who offered a unique insight into the life near the front lines and experiences of ambulance drivers and nurses. She was born in London, the youngest in the family of three. Her father was a carpet merchant and the family lived at 3 Porchester Terrace in 1911. Mudie-Cooke studied art at St John’s Wood Art School and Goldsmiths College in addition to briefly living and working in Venice.
In 1916 she enlisted as a volunteer in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) working as an ambulance driver. She later drove as a Volunteer Aid Detachment ( VAD) member with the Red Cross and in addition sometimes worked as an interpreter, being fluent in French, Italian and German.
Sometime during her volunteering she started sketching the scenes around her and recording the life of nurses near the front lines. She offered us a unique perspectives of female life near the front lines- an area less researched and known than the life of soldiers on the battlefield. Mudie-Cooke mostly worked in watercolour allowing for a quick painting process perfectly suited for the difficult circumstances of the war.
Her most famous work is In an Ambulance: a VAD lighting a cigarette for a patient now at the IWM which is often used a poster image for any discussion of volunteer work. It offers an intimate insight into the work of VADs, in this case of a nurse helping a soldier and lighting his cigarette. It bears a feeling of a frozen moment, and the light illuminates the whole image as if lifting it from the darkness. Mudie-Cooke shows a domestic space along the lines of ‘mobile homes’ with a sense of homeliness and hope, offering a momentous respite from the horrors of the war. This sense of home and traditional feminine values was often employed to remind soldiers of what they were fighting for, of their homes and loved ones back in the UK.
On the other hand, Mudie-Cooke highlights the importance of female volunteers at the time and the uncharacteristic for the time power dynamic of a younger woman being able to relieve the suffering of a much older men. Most artists of the WWI invoked traditional gender roles and societal beliefs in the works to ensure conformance with propaganda and favourable public opinion. Contrastingly, Mudie-Cooke showed the life near the front lines as it was offering uncompromising and often shocking scenes through the sheer power of her composition and feeling rather than by painting blood or bodies. In her works Etaples Hospital Siding: a VAD convoy unloading an ambulance train at night and Camiers Siding: a VAD convoy unloading an ambulance train at night after the Battle of the Somme she offers a grim insight into the reality of nurses’ work. They show the mechanical process of unloading the wounded and the facelessness of both the soldiers and nurses. The works carry a sense of hopelessness and pain, and both portray night scenes highlighting further the darkness of the war. The four women are stumbling under the heavy weight of the wounded soldier in Camiers Siding, showing the true burden of volunteers’ work. The train in both images signifies the previously unknown numbers of soldiers wounded, and the never-ending influx of new victims met by the nurses to further highlight the unwanted monotony of such work.
In addition to her portrayal of the work of the volunteers, Mudie-Cooke often sketched her surroundings offering us an unusual guide into the travelling of VADs and FANYs and the multitude of spaces she visited during the war.
After the end of the war, Mudie-Cooke was commissioned by the Red Cross to return to France to record the aftermath of the war. She also produced a portfolio of lithographs and sketches with the VAD Convoys in France, Flanders and Italy 1914-1919 which she gifted to the IWM and the volunteers she worked. Some of the lithographs offer a humorous take of the public opinion VADs were often met with. The VAD in theory, popular fiction and practice shows the reality and fiction of being a VADs and how often they were vilified in newspapers for their alleged promiscuity and unfeminine behaviour. Mudie-Cooke is also careful to point out that the careful propaganda image of a demure VAD (in theory) is a far cry from a reality of a tired woman changing the oil in her ambulance.
Upon the return from France, she travelled extensively in Europe and Africa. On 11 September 1925 she took her own life in France and a posthumous exhibition of her work was held in Beaux-Arts Gallery.
The works of Olive Mudie-Cooke were purchased by the Women’s Work Sub-Committee at the IWM after the war to honour and remember the work of volunteers. She also gifted some of her lithographs and later her sister Phyllis gave the museum a collection of her works. IWM remains the only public collection where her works could be found and the scholarship about her is still limited to a few WWI studies of female war artists.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
ART STORIE is a digital platform for the exploration of history of art and the stories it uncovers. Founded by Yulia and Elizabeth, two passionate art professionals, ART STORIE brings together a rich cultural heritage from all around the world.
From art lovers, historians and art critics to artists, gallerists and educators from around the world, ART STORIE is your ultimate destination for discovering the stories behind your favourite works. Discover our diverse range of art history courses here.
I love Olive Mudie-Cooke's work and would be very interested to listen to a lecture about her and other women artists of the First World War.