The 'Orphans' go for a short walk

In 2009 the Wellcome Library acquired four large paintings known as the Acts of Mercy. They had been painted by Frederick Cayley Robinson between 1915 and 1920 for display in the Middlesex Hospital, in the Fitzrovia district of central London. The Middlesex Hospital building was demolished in 2005 (except for its chapel, which still stands), and its assets, archives and responsibilities passed to the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The paintings, being homeless, were then acquired by the Wellcome Library. From the Wellcome Library they were lent in 2010 to the National Gallery for a temporary exhibition focused on them and their painter. More information about the paintings is available in several postings on this blog.

University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is now constructing a new cancer hospital, the UCH Macmillan Cancer Centre, in Huntley Street, London, south of the present University College Hospital and not far east of the site of the demolished Middlesex Hospital. 'The Orphans', one of the two pairs of paintings by Cayley Robinson that make up the Acts of Mercy, is being lent to the new cancer hospital, which will open next month, in April 2012. There is a certain appropriateness in the loan because the former Middlesex Hospital had a longstanding interest in, and reputation for, the treatment of cancer. [1]

That tradition went back to 1791 when a surgeon called John Howard sent a letter to "the medical gentlemen of the Middlesex Hospital" proposing that a ward be opened for "paupers afflicted with the disease called cancer". The purpose of this initiative was twofold: to afford relief to the patients and to investigate the causes of cancer. For the relief of patients, an out-patient as well as an in-patient service was suggested. For the purposes of investigation, Howard suggested that notes on cases be kept carefully and made available "to any intelligent or scientific person".

Howard was invited to put his proposals to the Middlesex Hospital Board: he not only did so but also produced an anonymous sponsor who was prepared to pay 3,000 guineas towards the costs. The hospital governors accepted the offer, and the ward opened in 1792. A few years later the sponsor was revealed to be the (by now deceased) Samuel Whitbread (1720–1796), the Bedfordshire brewer whose brewery was based in Chiswell Street in the City of London.

Whitbread's funds created the Cancer Charity, which has been described as "the centre and inspiration of the researches into malignant disease which have flowed from the Middlesex Hospital ever since." In 1914 the Barnato-Joel trustees endowed it with funds to build a new research laboratory. It was absorbed into the Middlesex Hospital's radiotherapy department in 1937. Both before and long after that date, many distinguished researchers, surgeons and physicians carried out at the Middlesex Hospital work towards the two objectives of the charity, relief of cancer patients and advancement of understanding of cancer.

It is that tradition of the Middlesex Hospital that will be continued in the new UCH Macmillan Cancer Centre in Huntley Street. It is remarkable that three specific features of John Howard's proposal to the Middlesex in 1791 are retained in the new building: out-patient treatments, in-patient facilities, and (in collaboration with the UCL Cancer Institute on the other side of the road), making the results of research available by open access publishing. As in the former Middlesex Hospital entrance hall, Cayley Robinson's 'Orphans' will be watching over patients in the atrium of the new building.

The other pair of paintings that makes up Acts of Mercy will remain in the Wellcome Library, and after 8 March 2012 will be redisplayed on facing walls, as Cayley Robinson originally intended. However, anyone wishing to see the four paintings together should revisit the Wellcome Library before that date for a last view of the quartet.

[1] R.S. Handley, 'Gordon-Taylor, breast cancer and the Middlesex Hospital', Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1971, 49: 151-164

Images: 'Orphans', by Frederick Cayley Robinson. Wellcome Library nos. 672831i and 672832i

Remembering The Middlesex Hospital

The façade of The Middlesex Hospital, Mortimer Street, London, now demolished.

The Wellcome Library receives a steady stream of former members of staff of The Middlesex Hospital renewing their acquaintance with the four well-remembered paintings Acts of Mercy by Frederick Cayley Robinson. The four paintings were displayed for over seventy years in the entrance hall of The Middlesex Hospital and became a familiar feature of Fitzrovia. The Middlesex Hospital was demolished in 2008 but plans to rebuild on the site came to nothing, a fact painfully evident to anyone looking at the site today. Fortunately the Cayley Robinson paintings survived, and are now not far away in the Wellcome Library.

Above, four visitors who joined the nursing staff of The Middlesex in November 1966: left to right, Sally Carroll (Sally Sweeney), Helen Wynne-Griffith (Helen Sandover), Glen Couper (Glen Wright) and Carolyn Kerr (Carolyn Howe), on their reunion at the Wellcome Library on 20 April 2010.

Not only can visitors get to see the paintings from The Middlesex which in some cases they have not seen for many years: they can also bring us new information about the past history of the paintings and the hospital.

Here is a photograph showing the installation of one of the Cayley Robinson paintings in the entrance hall of The Middlesex Hospital. It is set behind a colossal sheet of plate glass in a massive architectural frame with a polished maple veneer. The same maple finish was used for other architectural woodwork in the entrance hall of the hospital. Helen Wynne-Griffith is looking at the brass plaque set into the frame: the plaque, recording the gift of the paintings by Edmund Davis, is now in the Wellcome Library. The grand boiserie inside the building responds in scale to equivalent features in the façade (see top photograph above).

In the dark 1930s interior, the glass and the frame set the pictures apart, cloaking the paintings' deliberate mysteriousness with a further layer of remoteness. The current display in the Wellcome Library is the exact opposite: the paintings are exposed without glass on bright white walls, and are felt as physically present in the room. Both approaches have their rationales.

Above, the Acts of Mercy in the Wellcome Library, March 2010

We should be delighted to receive more visitors to see the Cayley Robinson paintings, but the paintings will be taken down when the Wellcome Library closes for its annual Closed Week on Monday 28 June 2010. They are being taken down in order to go on display in the Sunley Room of the National Gallery in a free exhibition (supported by the Wellcome Trust) from 14 July to 17 October 2010.

At the National Gallery other works by Cayley Robinson will also be shown alongside his Acts of Mercy, including Pastoral (1923-24, Tate), The Old Nurse (1926, The British Museum) and Self Portrait (1898, National Portrait Gallery, London). With Cayley Robinson's modern works, National Gallery paintings by Piero della Francesca (The Baptism of Christ, 1450s), Sandro Botticelli (Four Scenes from the Early Life of Saint Zenobius, about 1500) and Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes (Summer, before 1873) will be shown. Cayley Robinson was a learned painter who spent four years as a fine art student in Paris and three years studying art in Tuscany, which accounts for the wide and unusual range of influences from Piero to Puvis which he absorbed and reconfigured in his own paintings.

Further good news is that, while the Acts of Mercy are at the National Gallery, a new selection of paintings from the Wellcome Library will be temporarily on display in the Library. More will be revealed in July. After the exhibition closes in October 2010, the Cayley Robinson paintings will be returned to the Wellcome Library entrance hall.

New information about the paintings continues to arrive at the Wellcome Library: more in another posting.

The photographs of The Middlesex Hospital were kindly supplied by Sally Carroll.

Acts of Mercy by Frederick Cayley Robinson: now back on display

Hmm, these big white walls at the entrance to the Wellcome Library look rather bare and cold.


What does it look like if we try putting a painting up? One with warm colours, like one of the four paintings of the Acts of Mercy by Frederick Cayley Robinson, which the Wellcome Library acquired recently from the Middlesex Hospital?


Suppose we hang them in pairs? Would they fit?

Yes, the space could almost have been designed for them.











Magnificent! One can see how they relate to each other: there is a narrative in the pair that was designed to be seen sequentially, and a symmetry in those which were painted to be seen en face. And different colour schemes: the pair painted in World War I is more sombre, though whether the difference will be so pronounced when the pictures are cleaned cannot be known at present. Now that the paintings are again on display, details which have been overlooked are now visible, such as the pitted surface of the ancient stone steps, or the man with the handcart in the bottom right corner of one of the paintings: it looks as if he is delivering groceries to a Fitzrovia townhouse.

Visit the Wellcome Library to learn more about these paintings, their painter and their history. And if you were ever a patient, visitor or staff member at the Middlesex Hospital in Mortimer Street, London, do revisit these old friends.

Acts of Mercy by F. Cayley Robinson (1862-1927)

ACTS OF MERCY is the collective title of four large oil paintings on canvas painted by Frederick Cayley Robinson (1862-1927) between 1915 and 1920 for the Middlesex Hospital in London. They had been commissioned for the hospital around 1912 by the Australian-born mining tycoon and art-lover Edmund (later Sir Edmund) Davis (1861-1939).

The paintings were for many years on display in the entrance hall of the Middlesex Hospital. In 2005 the Middlesex Hospital's functions were transferred to University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH), and in 2008 the Middlesex Hospital building was demolished.

UCLH and the Wellcome Trust, with the aid of Tate and The Art Fund, have been in discussion to ensure that these works be retained for the public benefit, as Edmund Davis intended. Tate offered to safeguard the paintings while discussions about finding a permanent location proceeded. Each of the canvases measures approximately 200 x 340 cm. (6 ½ x 11 feet).

The Wellcome Trust has agreed to buy the four paintings for £235,000 and display two of them at any one time on the large walls in the entrance hall of the Wellcome Library. The other pair will be kept in the Library’s storage facilities where they can also be viewed on request. There they will join more than 1,200 oil paintings and other works collected by the founder of the Wellcome Library, Henry S. Wellcome (1853-1936).

The four canvases form two pairs. One of the pairs shows orphans and the other shows medical patients, reflecting the social and clinical roles of hospitals respectively. In the former pair (one of which is reproduced above), orphan girls are receiving sustenance and upbringing. In the latter pair, patients including soldiers injured in World War I gather at the entrance to the hospital. The paintings will be on public display in the Wellcome Library from March 2009.

Press release, 29 January 2009