Edward Adamson (31 May 1911 – 3 February 1996) was a British artist, "the father of Art Therapy in Britain", and the creator of the Adamson Collection.
Early years: Sale, Tunbridge Wells, Fleet Street, WW2 (1911–1945)
Edward Adamson was born in 1911 at Sale, near Manchester, in Cheshire. He had two brothers. Later his family moved to Tunbridge Wells in Kent. They were well off, successful in manufacturing. This gave Adamson some financial independence to achieve all he did during his life. He received a degree in Fine Art from Bromley School of Art in London (now part of Ravensbourne College).
Subsequently, he trained and qualified as a chiropodist, at his parents' behest as they wanted him to have 'a proper profession', concerned about his livelihood as an artist. He probably only saw a few patients – though his brass plate is in the Edward Adamson Archive at the Wellcome Library: 'E.J.Adamson. M.B.A.Ch. Chiropodist' (a gift from his parents, but never hung).
Then Adamson returned to a career in art, working as a graphic artist at a Fleet Street advertising agency for the rest of the 1930s, while doing his own drawings and paintings, which he exhibited in both London and Paris. During World War II, he was a conscientious objector, serving as a medical orderly in the Royal Army Medical Corps, the Army happy to have him as a qualified chiropodist. He became interested in helping long-term hospital patients pass the time.
Netherne and Hollywood Road
Art and research at Netherne (1946–1951)
After the War, he volunteered to work with Adrian Hill, an artist who had coined the term "Art Therapy" in 1942 while a patient in tuberculosis sanatoria, teaching drawing and painting to his fellow patients, and, later, to hospitalised soldiers. At the time Adamson met him, Hill was working with the Red Cross Picture Library to loan and lecture on reproductions of paintings to patients in British hospitals to enhance their recovery. Adamson was in the group who first brought this programme to a long-stay mental hospital - Netherne Hospital, Surrey – in 1946.
During his early visits to Netherne, Adamson was given several drawings by a man on a locked ward - JJ Beegan - made with the only materials he had, char from burnt matches and toilet paper. These objects were the first collected by Adamson, and the start of the Adamson Collection.
The Medical Superintendent, the psychiatrist Eric Cunningham Dax (1908 - 2008), was impressed by Adamson's rapport at his lectures with the people who were compelled to live at Netherne. Dax asked him to facilitate a new research art studio at Netherne, to investigate the role of art in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorder - a project maybe of its time. This project was the post-war continuation of the 1930s research at the Maudsley Hospital on art and psychosis (and mescaline) by the psychiatrists Eric Guttmann (1896–1948), Walter Maclay (1902–1964) and Francis Reitman (1905–1955) – the latter was Head of Clinical Research at Netherne from 1945.
The research art sessions were run single-handedly by Adamson from 1946 to 1950, and, according to Robertson, 689 people painted with Adamson in this period. Robertson does not report how many works were created in this period, only referring to
"The number of paintings per patient showed extreme variation. It seemed that the most standard comparison could be attained by confining attention to the first 10 pictures of the 215 patients who had painted at least that number".
It may be reasonable to infer that at least 3000 paintings were created. In early 2013, several small ceramics, with '1948' written on their base, were found in storage. It had not been known Adamson was encouraging people to work with clay at this time.