Media Type : Art Book

Synopsis : Artists recorded pathological findings in the eye long before we had ophthalmic photography. Even today paintings can sometimes show subtle details better than the camera. An Artist Perspective on the Eye is a collection of sketches and paintings by J. McGuinness Myers. Myers was recruited from retirement and spent three years at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. The 124 renderings are of corneal, lens and retinal disease as well as some surgical technique sketches. The illustrations are beautiful and especially show cornea and lens pathology with extraordinary clarity. They are presented as an art collection rather than as a textbook.

Target Audience : Ophthalmologists and art lovers

Review : No other medical specialty deals with a more beautiful organ than the eye. Ophthalmologists collect images of eye in health and disease, usually in photographs or movies. But sometimes, only a painting can accurately depict what we see with our eyes. J. McGuinness Myers was a talented and prolific medical illustrator. He had provided the illustrations for the two-volume Biomicroscopy of the Eye by M.L. Berliner, published in 1943 and 1949. All of the slit lamp images in Berliner’s 1485 page reference work are drawings and paintings by Myers. I was glad to find these volumes in our department’s library and was enthralled by the over 1500 paintings and sketches; hundreds of which are in color.

An Artist Perspective on the Eye is a handsome 11” x 11” art book published in 2012 to share with the world the illustrations that Myers created at the end of his career – during the three years that he was at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. The renderings are of corneal lens and retinal disease, as well as some surgical technique sketches. The book treats the illustrations as the works of art that they are.

An artist who is skilled at clinical examination can provide information that may be lost to photography. This is especially true for images of the cornea and the lens. At the slit-lamp we examine these structures with a very narrow, bright beam and our eyes are sensitive enough to see the surrounding structures – to put the slit beam into context. Unfortunately, the camera shows the bright beam but is not sensitive enough to show the surrounding environment. While I found all of the illustrations in this book to be stunning, I was most struck by the corneal paintings. The paintings are able to show the depth at which lesions lie with unparalleled clarity. The fundus paintings are also quite striking. The paintings demonstrate three-dimensional retinal changes through the use of a slit beam against a fully illuminated background. They also show cross sections in insets. Very few of these illustrations were ever published and only three were published in color.

I am an admirer of ophthalmologic artists. When I arrived at the University of Iowa, I discovered the iridocorneal angle paintings by E. Lee Allen. Like the cornea, the iridocorneal angle is difficult to photograph, especially if examined with a narrow slit beam. I published these paintings as an atlas of gonioscopy – not because I had any specific insights on gonioscopy – but because I wanted everyone to have access to these special paintings. I know that Lee Allen had always wanted his paintings to be presented in an art book like An Artist Perspective on the Eye .

I congratulate Dr Forster, Ms Hurtes and colleagues for preserving these remarkable paintings and sketches in such a beautiful format. They will delight ophthalmologists and art lovers alike.