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Camden New Journal - By ROISIN GADELRAB
Published: 7 June 2007

Brian Sewell - says buying up art for hospitals is in general a "lousy idea"

Art critic warns Tate should not buy
UCLH paintings

LEADING art critic Brian Sewell has warned that the Tate Gallery should be stopped from getting its hands on the historic paintings to be offloaded by the UCLH.
Instead, Mr Sewell said that a private buyer should be allowed to intervene.
University College London Hospital are selling off the artwork of British symbolist Frederick Cayley Robinson – four paintings together known as the Acts of Mercy.
Mr Sewell said: “Private buyers are much abused by the newspaper commentators but they are responsible for the maintenance, love, care of hundreds of thousands more than the state.”
The paintings were donated to the Middlesex Hospital by collector Sir Edmund Davis nearly a century ago but are now owned UCLH.
The New Journal revealed last month how the Tate Gallery have broken with convention and announced their interest in acquiring the paintings.
The gallery said that if it was able to buy the works then it they would be retained for “public benefit”.
Mr Sewell said: “In Tate Britain they hang about 500 paintings and own in the region of 30,000 other than the Turners. The chances of Cayley Robinson ever being seen are remote. They would just be locked up for 20, 30, 40 years. Bugger the public domain, it doesn‘t really do anything good.”
Mr Sewell, speaking to the New Journal last Wednesday, said: “Cayley Robinson has a good reputation for paintings of rather poetic movement in the history of British art and that’s about it. I think saving is much more in the hands of private enthusiasts than it is in the public curator who has no enthusiasm. If they go into the Tate they will disappear. I’m a fan of Cayley Robinson. He’s one of several painters of the period who are totally neglected by Tate and other institutions.
UCLH has been criticised for selling the paintings and former staff and patients have claimed that it doesn’t
The decision to get rid off them was taken at board level.
Mr Sewell said he believes buying up art for hospitals is, in general, a “lousy idea”.
“I’ve spent much of the last 14 years in and out of hospitals including Chelsea and Westminster,” he added. “My observation is that nobody looks at it. That it’s a total waste of money. The worst fate that can happen to any painting is to be put in a hospital.
I think it’s a lousy idea. What people want in hospital is a sympathetic and soothing decoration. They don’t want purple walls and yellow , floors. They want something that’s soothing and they don’t get them. The one thing people don’t do is look at the pictures. It’s a waste of time.
A UCLH spokesman said: “Following the sale of the Middlesex Hospital in the summer of 2006, there was nowhere suitable within the trust for the paintings to be relocated.”

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