Antiques Roadshow expert Geoffrey Munn is lending work from his own personal collection for a new exhibition about art and mental health.
The sketch by Victorian artist Richard Dadd shows patients in Broadmoor, where Dadd himself was treated for what is thought to schizophrenia, and opens at Bethlem Museum of the Mind at Bethlem Royal Hospital in Beckenham on Wednesday (feb 22).
Munn, who is regularly seen on the long-running BBC show casting his expert eye over jewellery brought in by members of the public, said he first encountered Dadd in a show at the Tate in 1974.
He said: “We were all having long hair and smoking herbal cigarettes and identifying with these paintings and I’ve been rather haunted by them all my life.”
Dadd was a rising star of the art scene when he suffered a complete breakdown and murdered his father leading him to be held at the Bethlam hospital before moving to Broadmoor where he died in 1886.
Munn bought the sketch, called The Broadmoor Smokers, more than a decade ago and believes Dadd may have intended it as a gift for another famous patient – William Minor who was also held at the hospital after killing a man while suffering delusions.
The sketch includes portraits of both men as well as hospital staff and figures from Minor’s paranoid delusions which included haunting visions of the American Civil War which he served in.
Munn said: “They both had a lot in common, they were both musicians, both were painters, both were wordy and both were highly sophisticated so it’s my contention that this is Richard Dadds’s gift to William Minor”.
It is going on show alongside other work in the exhibition, called The faces we present, which have been partly chosen by people who have experienced mental health issues themselves or worked with patients.
Rebecca Raybone, Curator at Bethlem Museum of the Mind, said: “It has been a pleasure working with members of SLaM’s Lived Experience Network, and so enlightening to read the captions that they’ve written to accompany the artwork in the exhibition. These are usually written by museum staff and are fairly objective. In this case, however, by incorporating their personal reactions and their own personal experiences, and by highlighting the details that appeal to them most they have created captions that show the artworks anew, and I know will enable visitors to see them differently too.”
:: The faces we present is at Bethlem Museum of the Mind, Bethlem Royal Hospital, Monks Orchard Road, Beckenham, from February 22 to June 17.
