In 1927 at the age of 23 the painter Nan West received an enviable but daunting commission. She was given the task of decorating 90 square metres of wall space in the new waiting hall at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital’s outpatients department on Bolsover Street, Fitzrovia. The Hospital had grown out of “The Society for the Treatment, at their own homes, of Poor Persons afflicted with Diseases and Distortions of the Spine, Chest, and Hip, etc.”, established in 1836 through the efforts of Dr. Charles Verral and Mrs. Henry Ogle of Eastbourne. In 1908 the outpatients department had acquired a new building on Bolsover Street, and in 1927 this was extended. The walls of the vast room where patients waited to consult a doctor would have been bleak indeed if West, the daughter of the hospital chairman, had not been called in to enliven them.
Nan West was born in London in 1904. By her own account her childhood was miserable, but things improved when she started attending the Slade School of Art in Bloomsbury. There she was a contemporary of Rex Whistler, and in 1927 she was working as Whistler’s assistant on another set of murals which the pair was producing for the restaurant at the Tate Gallery. West began the hospital murals around the same time.
Most of the murals represent the months of the year, and were originally displayed above the twelve doors leading to the clinics and offices. Painted in oils on canvas, each of the months has a garland of seasonal flowers enclosing its name. The paintings must surely have made life for its suffering occupants just a little brighter. In the early 20th century art was being created not just for prosperous drawing rooms, but also for the public spaces used by the poor and the not-so-rich.
At the far end of the Waiting Hall the largest mural, about four metres by three, depicts Summer. Four people are picnicking under a striped umbrella, while two lovers lie under a cherry tree, and another couple wanders off into the countryside, where Dover Castle can be seen on a distant hill.
After her marriage, West suffered a mental breakdown, which caused her to give up painting. In her unpublished autobiography she writes: “Everything ceased to be interesting, and I knew I was losing the skill I had at drawing….”. She later committed suicide.
A plaque on the wall at Bolsover Street, which refers to the artwork as the “Cycle of Seasons”, states her year of death as 1940. But an article published in 1998 cites a letter she wrote in 1949. According to The Contemporary Art Society, she died in 1956.
The Waiting Hall is listed (Grade II), and when a new outpatients department was built for the hospital further down the street in 2009, the old hall was incorporated into an office building created on the original site at 50 Bolsover Street.
West believed the hospital project had been too demanding for her “little talent”. Happily, we can judge for ourselves whether or not this was simply a case of “imposter syndrome” — that is, West was underestimating her own abilities.
I suspect that you will want to disagree with West. Her paintings are quite lovely. To quote Historic England on its listing page: “This is one of the largest mural cycles of the time to survive in London… The austere classicism of the architecture provides an elegant framework for Nan West’s informal painted scheme; the whole being an elegant and well-conceived composition. The murals have great rarity within a type which was never numerous and especially vulnerable to change. They also are an important example of a tradition of female mural artists working in the inter-war years whose work is highly regarded ..”
Views of the murals as they appeared before the hospital’s waiting room was divided up into offices can be seen in this article, originally published in the British Medical Journal. They include a photograph of Nan West at work on the “Summer” mural.
The heritage listing entry notes that West’s creative career flourished until 1937 during which time she also painted a Noah’s Ark scene at the Child Welfare Clinic, Chelsea, and murals for Simpson’s Tea Rooms in Piccadilly, which sadly no longer survive.
Aside from painting she wrote and illustrated “The Landscape Painter’s Calendar”, which was published by Methuen and Co in 1928.
To get access, contact Concord London Developments Ltd: The Listed Hall, 50 Bolsover Street, London W1W 5NG; T. +44 20 7307 1820.
Sue Blundell is a playwright and lecturer in Classical Studies. sueblundell.com