Mercy mission! Hospital art at National Gallery
Published: 22 April 2010
by TOM FOOT
HISTORIC hospital paintings that were rescued from the basement of the Old Middlesex Hospital and kept on public display following a New Journal campaign are to be exhibited in the National Gallery.
The Acts of Mercy by Frederick Cayley Robinson – four masterpieces depicting medical healing and care for orphaned children – were just days away from being sold at auction, but will now be hung in one of the country’s most illustrious settings.
Hospital bosses had said the paintings “did not really suit” the modern £450million University College London Hospital green glass building, which replaced the Middlesex in 2006.
But the paintings were saved following pressure from the New Journal and the Charlotte Street Association. National Gallery curators have described them as holding “the spiritual integrity of the Old Masters” and “the most important decorative commissions of the early part of the 20th century”.
Max Neufeld, former chairman of the Charlotte Street Association, said: “They were in the basement of Christie’s ready to be auctioned. We are very pleased they have not gone to Florida, or elsewhere. The National Gallery’s interest shows how the attitude to Cayley Robinson has changed. Initially people were fairly dismissive of the quality of these paintings.”
He added: “Locally, we’re extremely pleased to have some good news. The CNJ really kept going at that.”
The paintings had been donated to the hospital by philanthropist Sir Edmund Davis after he paid for the Middlesex Hospital’s entrance hall to be rebuilt in 1912. In 2007, the Wellcome Collection in Euston Road charity bought the paintings and they remain on public display. UCLH have agreed to two of them in the hospital’s new cancer centre.