15 Facts About Grace Pailthorpe

Grace Winifred Pailthorpe was a British surrealist painter, surgeon, and psychology researcher.

Grace Pailthorpe was the third child and the only daughter among the ten children born to Edward Wright Pailthorpe, a stockbroker, and Anne Lavinia Pailthorpe nee Green, a seamstress, who were both members of the Plymouth Brethren, a strict and puritanical religious sect.

Grace Pailthorpe enrolled at the Royal College of Music in 1908 but soon decided to study medicine and by 1914 had qualified as a doctor at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne with a degree awarded by Durham University.

In 1915 she worked, alongside both Henry Tonks and John Masefield, at the Hopital Temporaire d'Arc-en-Barrois in the Haute Marne district of France, and during 1916 Grace Pailthorpe worked as a surgeon at the Scottish Women's Hospital in Salonika.

Grace Pailthorpe worked as a medical officer for a gold mining company in Australia.

When she returned to England in 1922, Grace Pailthorpe began studying psychological medicine and Freudian analysis.

Grace Pailthorpe started research into criminal psychology at Birmingham Prison and, in 1923, with a grant from the Medical Research Council began research at Holloway Women's Prison.

Grace Pailthorpe proceeded to publish books and papers on the psychology of delinquency and, in 1931, established the Association for the Scientific Treatment of Criminals, which eventually became the modern day Portman Clinic, now based within the National Health Service, and the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.

In 1935, Grace Pailthorpe met Reuben Mednikoff and together they began research into the psychology of art.

Grace Pailthorpe contributed to the International Surrealist Exhibition held in London during 1936 and contributed to other Surrealist exhibitions and publications, such as the London Bulletin.

In 1938 Grace Pailthorpe published The Scientific Aspect of Surrealism which was not well received by other British Surrealist artists.

From September 1942 to April 1943 Grace Pailthorpe worked at the Essondale Mental Health hospital in British Columbia and in 1944 she and Mednikoff had a joint exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Alongside the exhibition Grace Pailthorpe gave a number of talks on surrealism, one of which was broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The couple returned to England in March 1946 and from 1948 until 1952 Grace Pailthorpe was a Consultant Psychiatrist at the Portman Clinic, with Mednikoff as her assistant.

Grace Pailthorpe ran a School of Art Therapy from 1950 until 1958 when she moved to Sussex.