Hogarth’s Hidden Masterpiece Returns to View at the Great Hall, St Bart’s
William Hogarth’s The Pool at Bethesda depicts the Bible story of Christ telling the lame man to take up his bed and walk — a perfect subject with which to decorate a hospital wall. However, there’s so much more in this painting.
For almost 300 years this enormous mural, 4m by 6m, has been hidden on the staircase to St Bartholomew’s Hospital’s Great Hall at Smithfield. Not for much longer. After restoration, it will at long last be viewable by the public this October.
It’s a landmark picture for Hogarth (he was approaching 40 when he painted it), by far his biggest painting. Hogarth made his reputation painting ordinary people as they really were, in large canvases depicting social situations and the calamities that could arise, which he popularised by making engravings that sold widely across all classes.
However, the academically approved genre of history painting was normally not for him — until he took on this project. His father-in-law, however, was the esteemed James Thornhill (who had not approved of his daughter’s marriage), the academically correct artist of the enormous Painted Ceiling at Greenwich. Hogarth thought he was starting a new phase in his career. But 1736 was on the tail end of the fashion for monumental paintings of this kind, and he never got another large-scale commission.
St Bartholomew’s, forever known as Bart’s, was founded in 1123, supported by a priory until the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1540s, after which it had to fund itself until the NHS in the 1940s. The Hall was built to be a grand venue in which fundraising events kept the hospital’s economy buoyant. But being part of the hospital’s administrative wing, its upkeep was low on the NHS’s list of priorities, and over the years a rotting roof and leaks dimmed the glory of a magnificently moulded and gilded ceiling.
So, partly to mark Bart’s 900th anniversary, the Hall, along with its staircase and the Hogarths, The Pool at Bethesda and its smaller adjacent partner The Good Samaritan, was to be restored, and Barts Heritage Trust was set up to raise the £10m needed.
No luxury was spared by the conceivers of the Hall, designed by James Gibb (St Martin-in-the-Fields), and it was decided to hire some eminent Italian muralists to decorate the staircase walls with suitable biblical subjects. Word quickly got to Hogarth, by then at the height of his popularity, who was outraged: only an English painter could be commissioned for such a prestigious project. And he would do it for free. It must be one of the most quixotic gestures in the history of art.
His themes, the smaller Good Samaritan (philanthropy) on the side wall, adjacent to the giant The Pool at Bethesda (healing), present the main two characters at the centre in a classical tableau and academically approved fashion. Howeer, they are surrounded by a sickly throng thirsty for healing miracles, who are believed to have been modelled by Hogarth on the actual ailing inmates of the hospital. So much so that today a popular seminar in this ancient teaching hospital is done standing in front of the huge image, risking neck injuries, to diagnose what the subjects were suffering from. And social historians do the same to see what evidence these ailments give for life and living conditions in early 18th-century Smithfield.
Will Palin, former collections curator of the Soane Museum (which houses the whole series of Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress), is CEO of the new Barts Heritage Trust. He explains that the Hall was on the Buildings at Risk Register before the decision was taken to restore it. One hundred and sixty windows have had to be removed, restored and replaced, the entire roof is being reconstructed, the Hogarths are being restored, and the Hall’s interior is being cleaned and restored, including the portrait of Henry VIII “in the style of Hans Holbein the Younger”, which Hogarth and Gibbs are said to have supervised the hanging of, precisely where it now hangs — and the names of donors given new prominence on their honour boards. “It used to cost £50 to get your name up there,” Palin remarks. “It’s £50,000 now.”
The Pool at Bethesda, not a mural, was painted off-site, he says, possibly at the studio of Hogarth’s friend the landscape painter George Lambert in Covent Garden, and installed in 1734–5 (The Good Samaritan was painted in situ and completed in 1736–7). So two or three years of work in all. Both are on canvas, and Lambert painted the backgrounds while Hogarth’s assistant Richards did the decorative elements. Bethesda was painted as one piece then cut into sections, carried probably in rolls across London and fixed to the new timber frame on the staircase — with the joins then touched in.
“I think the paintings are extraordinary, not classically ‘correct’ (perspective etc) but full of life and vitality, and they display a deep empathy with the characters, particularly the sick and the lame,”
Palin says. “I think as an achievement they are amongst Hogarth’s finest works.
“Obviously the public appetite was for his smaller narrative works, but Hogarth here was pitching for elite patronage. He therefore undertook the work at Bart’s in the hope that the paintings would open the door to more large-scale commissions (history painting was considered the pinnacle of the craft) — and this was the major incentive for Hogarth undertaking the works. However, the vogue for grand history painting was already waning, and other than the altarpiece for St Mary’s in Bristol, Hogarth did not repeat the exercise.”
For more insights into London’s culture, people, and politics, from history to now, visit EyeOnLondon.
Follow us on:
Subscribe to our YouTube channel for the latest videos and updates!
We value your thoughts! Share your feedback and help us make EyeOnLondon even better!
