Quentin Blake is one of Britain’s best-loved and most successful illustrators. Well known for illustrating stories by Roald Dahl, Blake was Britain’s first Children’s Laureate.  Quentin Blake – As large as life presents recent work created for four hospitals in the UK and France and designed to have a therapeutic effect on their residents.

This exhibition of over sixty works, draws from four series' that were created for a children’s hospital, a maternity hospital, young people with eating disorders and older patients with mental health issues. The subject of each illustration will allow visitors to reflect on artists’ continuing contribution to hospitals and child welfare.  Hanging alongside Blake’s work will be paintings by William Hogarth and his contemporaries who donated paintings and sculptures to the Foundling Hospital in the 1740s. The Museum’s art collection, spanning more than four centuries, will provide visitors with an unexpected and resonant backdrop; one that situates Blake within a tradition of great artists creating work for hospitals.

Quentin Blake explains, “I think the very presence of pictures helps to make being in, or visiting a hospital a more normal, less alien experience. What I have tried to include is a certain amount of detail, some interesting activities, and some suggestions of the little drama of relationships, so that the viewers - especially any who have to wait - may feel the desire to go on looking and perhaps even to speculate about the stories happening in front of them."

Send this to a friend

Print this page

More events in Museums & Galleries

bookmark with:

delicious

digg

reddit

facebook

stumbleupon