Thomas Hennell

Portrait Study: Five Figures

c.1935

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Not on display

Artist: Thomas Hennell 1903–1945
Medium: Ink and watercolour on paper
Dimensions: Support: 264 × 368 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1940
Reference: N05413

Display caption

This drawing of Hennell’s fellow inmates at Claybury mental hospital in Essex was captioned ‘We were debtors to the Sane’ when Hennell used it as the frontispiece in his book The Witnesses.

Hennell collected old hand-made paper for his drawings and often used marking ink, which he is said to have diluted down to a silvery grey by secret means.

Gallery label, September 2004

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Catalogue entry

N05413 PORTRAIT STUDY: FIVE FIGURES c. 1935

Inscr. ‘T. Hennell’ b.l.
Pen and ink and wash, 10 3/8×14 1/2 (26·5×37).
Purchased from the artist (Knapping Fund) 1940.
Exh: Leicester, November 1955–January 1956 (26).

The drawing was made about 1935 at Claybury Mental Hospital where the artist was confined, and was used as frontispiece to The Witnesses by the artist, published by Peter Davies 1938, where it was entitled ‘We are Debtors to the Sane’. This is an autobiographical book dealing with his experiences in the mental hospital.

On the reverse is another pen and wash drawing of two seated men, a monk sketched in behind them, and a slight outline of a standing man in the centre. Inscr. ‘Jethro Tull and his friends’ (t.r.). Hennell's poem ‘Jethro Tull's Husbandry’ was begun in 1934 and was published by the Oxford University Press in 1936.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I