Hogarth’s paintings at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital

The paintings by Hogarth, to which a brief reference was made in the British Medical Journal of October 8th, ornament two of the walls of the grand staircase which leads to the Great Hall in the north wing of the hospital. The subjects are “The Good Samaritan” and “The Pool of Bethesda.” They were painted gratuitously in 1736 by Hogarth, who was thereupon elected a life-governor of the charity. The pictures are well worthy of the careful treatment to which they have lately been subjected, for the painter in his autobiographical sketch says that they were his first efforts in the grand style. “Before I had done anything of much consequence in this walk,” he says (that is, the painting and engraving of modern moral subjects) “I entertained some hopes of succeeding in what the puffers in books call ‘the great literary style of history painting,’ so that without having done a stroke of this grand business before I quitted small portraits and familiar conversations, and with a smile at my own temerity commenced history painter, and on a great staircase at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital painted two Scripture stories, ‘The Pool of Bethesda’ and ‘The Good Samaritan,’ with figures 7 feet high.” Both paintings were engraved in 1772, and impressions of the plates appear in Boydell’s edition of Hogarth’s works. (BMJ 1898;ii:1186)