Bethlem Royal Hospital, popularly known as Bedlam, was the first asylum for the mentally ill to be founded in England. Thomas Monro, a specialist in mental disorders, served as chief physician of the hospital from 1792 to 1816. In 1793, when the British draughtsman and watercolourist John Robert Cozens (1752-1797) was admitted at Bedlam after a nervous breakdown, Monro tended him and encouraged him to keep working, meanwhile acquiring a huge number of his drawings.

If, as a doctor, he seems to have occasionally turned to art as a form of therapy, as an amateur painter Monro embraced art for passion and as a source of personal comfort. An avid collector, especially of drawings and watercolours, and a patron of young artists, he organised an informal school, later known as the Monro Academy, whose members included the likes of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851). Every Friday evening, he welcomed talented pupils at his home in Adelphi Terrace, London, supplying them with painting materials and training them to copy from works in his collection as well as to paint landscapes in watercolour, a practice that at the time was still in its infancy. This drawing, among Monro’s finest and most typical in terms of subject matter (a landscape with a winding path leading to a cottage partially hidden behind trees and bushes), testifies to his preference for countryside views. It is typical of Monro’s favoured subject matter but unusual in its large scale and bold handling. Its exceptional quality has long been recognised, as recorded in the comments of Basil Long, former Keeper of the Paintings Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, transcribed on the verso: ‘Mr Long of the South Kensington Museum saw this July 1923 and told me it is the finest drawing by Dr Monro he has ever seen’.

R. Ford, by July 1923 (per inscription on mount verso); Michael Jaffe (1923-1997); his posthumous sale, Dominic Winter Auctioneers (Cirencester), 5 March 2020, lot 364; purchased there by Abbot & Holder (London) (£180); purchased there by the Spooner Trust, July 2020; Gift of the Spooner Charitable Trust, 2020

Watermark: Watermark: none.

Collector's mark: none.