Portrait of a soldier [Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Bruce Bruce-Porter]

Depticted in three quarter length, this sketch for a portrait of a soldier depicts Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Bruce Bruce-Porter as he leans with his weight on his left hip and his right forearm against some stone masonry including a stone column in the background. In 1919, Col Harry Edwin Bruce Bruce-Porter, C.M.G , Army Medical Service (T.F.). was given the Knight Commanders of the Military Division order. H. E. B. Bruce-Parker (Harry Edwin Bruce Bruce-Porter) (1869-1948) was educated privately and at the London Hospital, where he won many prizes and scholarships. He qualified as L.S.A. in 1892, and took the Conjoint diploma in the following year. He then joined the Army Medical Staff and after rising to the rank of surgeon-captain he resigned and began private practice in the West End of London. As Dr. Bruce-Porter he was soon well known, and at one time had probably one of the largest and most lucrative general practices in London. His opportunity for distinction came with the war of 1914-18, when he was recalled to service and promoted to command the Third London General Hospital, where he found himself at the head of a team of the leading London consultants. Later he went to Mesopotamia in command of No. 40 British General Hospital, was mentioned in dispatches, and awarded the C.M.G. in 1917. He founded the Bruce-Porter Home for children of Dr. Barnardo's Homes needing orthopaedic treatment. In 1919, then a colonel in the Army Medical Service, he was honoured for his services by the conferment of the K.B.E.
George Coates (1869-1930) studied painting under L. Bernard Hall between 1895-96 acquiring both respect for the painter's craft and the approach of the Munich School. He won a travelling scholarship in 1896 and went to London next year before moving to Paris, where he worked at the Académie Julian and studied under Jean Paul Laurens. In Paris Coates renewed an acquaintance with a fellow art student, Dora Meeson (1869-1955) who later became his wife. Coates and Meeson established themselves in Chelsea, London where they became members of an extensive circle of Australian expatriate artists. Coates established himself as one of London's leading portrait painters, where he lived until returning to Australia in 1921, and his realism and representational style emphasized a harmonious range of low tones, with a detailed and painstaking approach.