A healthier picture... how art can help the healing process

Daniel Evans, artistic director of Sheffield Theatres, said one of the problems of quantifying theatre was that “you can’t measure the effect of watching Shakespeare”.

It may be immeasurable, but there is, one hopes, little argument that great art can only lift the spirit. Perhaps that is why hospitals around the world have surprisingly impressive collections of art.

Art critic, historian and professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University Richard Cork has delved into the history of the art owned by and displayed in European hospitals for his latest book. The Healing Presence of Art: A History of Western Art in Hospitals explores the surprisingly great art we find in our medical centres.

Cork, who is in Yorkshire tonight, presenting a lecture at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds about his book, began his journey in the Painted Hall in Greenwich. Now opened freely to visitors, it was once a hospital for naval veterans.

“In the 1980s I discovered there was this wealth of fascinating and historic art in London hospitals,” says Cork. “The Foundling Museum, which holds the collection of The Foundling Hospital, includes some incredible masterpieces by William Hogarth.

“But it was when I first discovered the Painted Hall in Greenwich that I realised this all warranted further investigation. The hall sits inside what was the Royal Hospital for Seamen. In 1708, James Thornhill was commissioned by King William to paint the dining hall. It is the most incredible piece of art in this hall designed by Christopher Wren.

“I started thinking ‘hang on a minute, there is all this amazing art in London hospitals, maybe there is more around Europe’.”

Cork began his search and discovered his hunch was correct. The collecting of art by hospitals began in the Renaissance, when many hospitals were owned and operated by the Church.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, many people were illiterate and so there was a great emphasis on visual art.

The Church was a great collector of art and combined this collecting with the natural place to display art – hospitals.

Cork says: “Art can do so much to make us feel better. It was felt that this art that was owned by the churches, who were operating the hospitals, ought to be put where patients could see it. The idea was that it would help to remind patients in hospitals of other worlds outside the walls.

“You still can’t really put a limit or a measurement on just how much that can help people in hospitals – whether that’s patients, staff or visitors.”

Mr Cork’s lecture is part of a series organised by Leeds Art Fund to mark the organisation’s centenary. The lecture series, running until November, will also features talks from Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry.

Mr Cork says coming to Leeds to take part in the lecture series will be an opportunity to share his work with an audience, but it is also an opportunity to evangelise about a subject for which he has a passion.

“Hospitals are such important places. When you think about it, so many of the important events in our lives happen in hospitals,” he says.

“Medicine and curing people belongs to the doctors, but I don’t think you can separate the mind and body, or the spirit or soul or whatever you want to call it.

“I think we have all experienced the sense of feeling mentally better after experiencing a piece of great art and there is no doubt that must have a beneficial effect on your health.”

He added: “My dad was 96 when he died. The last hospital he went to was in the middle of Watford and the first thing I noticed was the absence of art on the walls. It made it a very cold and sterile place.”

Cork cites the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh, which houses the work of Phoebe Traquaire, an Italian hospital which features the work of Pierro Della Francesca and Hans Memling’s work which is displayed at the St John’s Hospital in Bruges as examples of work that have a “healing effect on the human spirit”.

There are the other, slightly sadder stories of art in hospitals.

“Poor old Van Gogh, when he was in a mental institution in France, painted almost constantly – and held a great number of exhibitions of his work inside the institution,” said Mr Cork.

Richard Cork lecture, Henry Moore Institute, The Headrow, Leeds, 6.30pm today. Details and tickets on 0113 247 8256.