Winifred McCubbin Portrait of Vera Scantlebury Brown, OBE, MB, ChB (Melbourne)

This portrait by Winifred McCubbin is in the collection of the Medical History Museum, University of Melbourne.

Vera Scantlebury Brown (1889-1946) served as an assistant surgeon and officer of the Royal Army Medical Corps at London’s Endell Street Military Hospital during World War I. It was the only military hospital run by women within the British Army. Dr Vera, as she was known, was appointed director of the new Department of Infant Welfare in 1926, the first woman to head a government department in Victoria. She made far-reaching contributions in expanding and improving universal and free paediatric healthcare services across the state, the impacts of which can still be seen in healthcare centres today. Dr Vera received an OBE in 1938 in recognition of her distinguished work in preventative medicine.

Ruby Winifred Francis studied at Melbourne’s National Gallery School, before marrying Hugh McCubbin, the son of artist Frederick McCubbin, in 1924. Affectionately known as Ruby Win, she resumed painting and exhibiting in the 1930s after a decade caring for her young family. Winifred McCubbin was an accomplished portraitist, and member – later president – of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors.