Identified works created in Adamson's studios

Paintings, drawings, and sculptural works created in Adamson's studios arranged by creator's surname and date of creation, where given.
Subjects in the artworks are broad. These range from depictions of the hospital buildings and grounds alongside other patients, staff and seasonal events; scenes of the outside world including towns, countryside, coastal views and domestic life, either in remembrance or imagination; and more abstract works containing lines, shapes, animals, human figures, words or objects alongside each other.
However, the creator’s intention and meaning behind the works has been largely lost outside of Adamson’s anecdotal accounts. There are frequently inscriptions including a brief description or subject on the reverse of the works, but their source is itself open to interpretation. Whilst the hand is presumed to be Adamson’s, the content may have been the result of direct conversation with the creator, interpretation from Adamson, interpretation from the creator’s doctor, or a mixture of all three.
Additional information about these works and their creators has been to the records from Adamson’s own written and oral accounts, as well as supporting documentation within related archives, Adamson Collection Trust (SA/ADC), and the papers of Rudolph and Gerda Freudenberg (PP/RKF).

1947 paintings, 376 drawings, 125 objects, 13 sculptures, 2 prints, 1 notebook and 1 mixed media work

The majority of material was acquired stored in folders numbered by Alice Jackson, Adamson Trust Collection Curator, c.2007-2010 during an inventory of the Collection. These works were previously made available in the Wellcome Collection catalogue individually but have been recatalogued here to reflect this grouping. Slight rearrangement within the folder has occured to better reflect original order by date of creation but all inventory numbers and titles given are stated in the catalogue. Other material was framed directly prior to acquistion and on display in South London and Maudsley Trust (SLaM) Hospitals, or stored at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind; these items have been added to the relevant group and their direct provenance recorded in the item record.

The majority of the works were transferred from SLaM and stored at Wellcome Collection in 2012 on loan term loan, then formally acquired in 2016. Sculptures and other 3D works by Gwyneth Rowlands, Graham Gurr and other unidentified creators were acquired in 2024, following temporary storage at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind.

Photography taken prior to acquistion by Wellcome Collection of both extant and lost works can be seen in PP/RKF/B.17/2/9 and PP/RKF/B.17/2/8

For artistic responses to the collection: Art making and the Adamson Collection at Netherne Hospital

For other published interpretations of the collection: Bethlem papers on the inside of outsider art Raw Vision Art, power and the asylum Private Intentions Art of those with lived experience A Conversation with Edward Adamson The Adamson Collection: illustrations of mental illness or a testament to spontaneous artistic expression? Hogan, S. (2001) Healing Arts: the history of art therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Adamson, E. (1984) Art as Healing. London: Coventure.© John Timlin Byrne, P. (1996) Edward Adamson and the experiment. International Journal of Art Therapy, 1, 32–36. Adamson, E. (1970) Art for Health. In TheSocialContext of Art by Jean Creddy (ed.). London: Tavistock.

For other related collections: See American Visionary Art Museum for other works created at Netherne Hospital, including works by Mary Bishop, Rolanda Polonsky and William Kurelek, and a collection of published books and journals owned by Edward Adamson
See Surrey History Centre for information about Netherne Hospital including hospital records, photographs and printed and published materials
See Surrey History Centre for information about Netherne Hospital including hospital records, photographs and printed and published materials

Edward Adamson was an artist and one of the pioneers of art therapy in Britain. First artist to be employed by NHS, he worked in a long-stay mental health asylum Netherne in Surrey 1946-1981, facilitating art sessions for the patients. He kept most of the works and started The Adamson Collection which currently holds about 5,500 works in different media. Adamson was instrumental in creating the British Association of Art Therapists in 1964 and was briefly its first chair. Adamson was born on 31 may 1911 in Sale near Manchester. He received a degree in Fine Art from Beckenham and Bromley School of Art (today Ravensbourne) and Teacher's Certificate from Arthur Segal's School of Painting. He also qualified as chiropodist. He worked as a commercial artist at Haycock Press Ltd. advertising agency on Fleet Street in the 1930s and as conscientious objector served as medical orderly during the Second World War. After the war Adamson worked with another artist, Adrian Hill, and was involved in the British Red Cross Picture Library, a programme bringing reproductions of famous paintings accompanied by lectures to the patients of hospitals, most prominently TB sanatoria. Adamson was in the first group to extend the programme to long-stay mental hospitals and in 1946 got employed, initially part-time, at Netherne hospital in Surrey. He facilitated psychiatric research art studio there 1946-1950 and later supervised several art studios allowing free expression to patients until his retirement in 1981. Adamson was the first artist employed by the NHS and didn't want to subsume 'art therapy' under 'occupational therapy' within public health structure. He was instrumental in creating the British Association of Art Therapists in 1964 and was briefly its first chair and in 1969-1970 was briefly Head of the first British Art Therapy training programme at St. Albans School of Art. Adamson began collecting the patients' works during his early visits to Netherne and later kept all the works created in his studios, inscribing them with the name and the date on the back, assembling what is today known as the Adamson Collection. After his retirement in 1981 the Collection was hosted 1981-1997 in Ashton Wold, the estate of Miriam Rothschild (Lane) (1908-2005), British entomologists. The Collection was subsequently housed in Lambeth Hospital in London and as of June 2013, most of the works are deposited at the Wellcome Library, awaiting decisions regarding their future housing. Netherne paintings and drawings were shown as early as in 1950, during the International Exhibition of Psychopathological Art at the First International Congress of Psychiatry in Paris. Selections from the Collection were shown at the major international exhibitions, including two at the London ICA (in 1955 and 1964) and others in Egypt, Canada and Israel. Adamson lectured on the Collection in Britain and abroad, including a residency in Egypt in the 1970s. In 1984 Adamson published, together with his life partner since 1953, the teacher and writer John Timlin (b. 1930), a book Art as Healing (London : Coventure, 1984), introducing his work at Netherne and the Collection. Adamson and Timlin regularly visited the Jungian art therapy community in Withymead, Oxfordshire, established by Irene and Gilbert Champernowne. In later life Adamson distanced himself from the British art therapy and the Jungians, feeling more at home with the 'Outsider Art' approach to the collection of patients' works. In 1995 he donated several works to American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore, USA. Adamson died on 3 February 1996 in his studio in Chelsea, London. His ashes were interred at the Ashton Chapel on the Ashton Wold estate. Towards the end of 1996 it transpired that Adamson was to be included on the 1997 New Year Honours list and awarded an MBE.

Adamson claimed he largely collected the artworks created in his studios because residents of Netherne Hospital were not allowed to keep many personal possessions, and of those they did have, were unable to keep them safely stored or displayed; others simply had no interest in keeping them. However, early in his practice at Netherne, the works were explicitly kept and given to doctors to aid in their diagnoses and treatment of individuals, particularly between 1946-1951 under the direction of Eric Cunningham Dax.
The artworks also had the purpose of demonstrating the efficacy of art therapy for Edward Adamson, who exhibited work from the collection as early as 1948, both inviting visitors to a gallery space within the hospital grounds as well as externally exhibiting to larger professional audiences. For most of his career, the works were viewed and interpreted through the lens of professionals in the field of Jungian psychoanalysis but have been more recently of interest to exponents of the Outsider art movement.
The majority of the surviving works in this collection were produced in Netherne Hospital between 1948-1981, with a small amount produced in Adamson's studio at Hollywood Road, London. During the closure of Netherne Hospital between 1989 and 1994, the surviving works were moved to a barn at Ashton Wold, a property owned by Adamson Collection Trustee, Miriam Rothschild. Adamson continued to exhibit the works here to professional audiences.
Following Adamson's death in 1996, the artworks were transferred to the South London and Maudsley Trust (SLaM) Hospital group, where they were put on display in hospital corridors.
Prior to 2004, works were futher weeded by Michael Freudenberg and Alice Jackson, trustee and curator of The Adamson Collection Trust respectively, to remove works 'that display either no artistic merit or have no ;story' attached'.