The Illustrated Hospital by Quentin Blake

The Illustrated Hospital by Quentin Blake’s large and relatively unknown body of work for hospitals and healthcare settings has never before been collected together in one place. The Illustrated Hospital by Quentin Blake is a beautifully-crafted catalogue of all the drawings he designed for these specialised spaces and the patients, staff and visitors who use them. Nearly 20 years in the making, this book allows everyone to enjoy Blake’s wonderful, varied visions originally installed in clinics across the UK and in France.

Since 2005, Quentin Blake’s drawings for hospitals have become a significant part of his work. Because of their clinical function, many of the spaces are not easily accessible to visitors, so relatively few people – only patients and hospital staff – may get the chance to see these artworks. This is the first time that all of Quentin’s work for hospitals has been collected together to form a detailed catalogue. 

With a total of well over 400 drawings, for a wide variety of venues, it’s been a real challenge to try and make this collection as complete as possible. I hope we’ve succeeded. For reasons of space – not to mention the impossibility of pinning down a situation which is constantly changing – we’ve only included works which Quentin has produced specifically for healthcare settings. Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, for example, has a copy of the large mural featuring some of the University’s most famous alumni, which Quentin created for its 800th anniversary in 2009; and the Ophthalmology Outpatients Department at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury boasts a set of prints of Roald Dahl’s characters, gifted to them by Quentin in 2016. There are certainly others. All these works are much valued in the spaces they occupy, but the drawings weren’t created with the hospital setting in mind, so, sadly, are not included here. 

As you turn the pages of this book, however, you’ll find there are plenty of unexpected delights to discover in Quentin’s ‘illustrated hospital’. 

Specifications

The Illustrated Hospital by Quentin Blake
Compiled by Liz Williams
Design by Gavin Ambrose and Sophie Stericker

Extent: 326 pages
Size: 200 X 240

About Quentin Blake

Quentin Blake was born in the suburbs of London in 1932 and has drawn ever since he can remember.

He has always made his living as an illustrator, having had his first drawing published in Punch when he was 16 and still at school.  After National Service and Cambridge (he studied English under F R Leavis) he taught for over twenty years at the Royal College of Art, where he was head of the Illustration department from 1978 to 1986. He continued to draw for Punch, The Spectator and other magazines over many years, while at the same time entering the world of children’s books with A Drink of Water by John Yeoman in 1960.

 

Read full biography

Image © Linda Kitson