Olive Mudie-Cooke studied at St John’s Wood Art School,
Goldsmith’s College, and in Venice before travelling to France
in 1916 as a Voluntary Aid Detachment driver. Whilst in France,
she produced numerous drawings and watercolours of the events
she witnessed. 

Seeking to promote the somewhat underrepresented impact
of women on the war effort, the Women’s Work Sub-Committee
purchased several of Mudie-Cooke’s paintings for the Imperial War
Museum in 1919. 

In 1920, she was commissioned by the British Red Cross
to return to the Western Front as an official war artist, and she
created remarkable depictions of the human side of conflict, such
as British medics treating French peasants wounded by shells left on
the Somme battlefield. 

She exhibited at the Cambridge University Architectural Society
in 1921 and travelled widely in Europe and Africa in the following
years; returning in 1925 to France, where she took her life.