Frederick Cayley Robinson: Acts of Mercy
National Gallery of Art, London
14 July - 17 October, 2010
Admission Free
Frederick Cayley Robinson (1862 – 1927) was a British Symbolist, that is a painter that offered fantasy, dream and hypersensitivity in place of the naturalism and realism that reflected the material world(Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists). Between 1915 and 1920 he completed Acts of Mercy, four large-scale allegorical works commissioned to adorn the Middlesex Hospital that was being rebuilt between 1928 and 1935. All four works were displayed in the entrance hall of the hospital until 2007. They were then purchased by the Wellcome Trust and are usually on public display in the Wellcome Library in Euston. At present, they are part of an exhibition, Frederick Cayley Robinson: Acts of Mercy in the Sunley Rooms of the National Gallery. The series is being juxtaposed with other paintings, most notably The Baptism of Christ by Piero della Francesca, and paintings by Andrea Mantegna and Sandro Botticelli, artists that influenced Cayley Robinson when he went to Florence in 1898.
The works are massive – at least ten feet by six . Two Acts of Mercy are followed by the name Orphans, and two by Doctor. In the first Orphans painting, a column of adolescent girls descend a staircase into a room where a table has been laid and set in the manner of that in Leonardo’s Last Supper. A lamp burns at one end, its light shedding upon the faces of the young women seated there. At the other end, a patron is pouring a drink for one young girl. The table linen is sparkling white, as are the bonnets, and the aprons that the orphans wear under their simple, blue frocks.
The architecture is grounded in the Renaissance, the refectory being made of thick, white walls and supported inside by massive columns. But the ‘Dutch’ effect of the painting is heightened by the simple attire of the subjects and the light that pours in through a window immediately above the table, reminiscent of Vermeer. One orphan peeps out at us.
In the second Orphans painting the meal is over, the lamp has been extinguished and the orphans are clearing away. The patrons have gone and a ginger cat sits alongside the table. In the first Doctor painting, we see soldiers with bandaged wounds standing about the doorway outside the hospital. To the left of the painting stand two nurses, their attire – blue frocks, white aprons and bonnets – rendering them like fully-grown orphans. To the left is the statue of a man astride a horse, helmet on head and sword in hand. In the second Doctor painting we are outside again, the soldiers and nurses having being replaced by civilians. From an overhead gallery, doves fly. In the midst of a group of people, a woman holds a baby. At their foot, a dog stares doggedly out at us.
The subjects in all the paintings have been perfectly, if a little stiffly, rendered. Visitors to the exhibition will enjoy deciphering the allegories and symbols, as much as the aura of peace and calm in the space in contrast to the outside cauldron of Trafalgar Square. The exhibition is open until October 17, and is free to enter.