Adrian Keith Graham Hill (1895 – 1977) - British Artist

Adrian Keith Graham Hill was born in Charlton, London on 24 March 1895.  His parents were Graham and Emma Matilda Hill.  He was educated at Dulwich College and went on to study at the St John's Wood Art School between 1912 and 1914.

When war broke out, Adrian enlisted with the Honourable Artillery Company. Because of his artistic abilities, he was assigned to a Scouting and Sniping Section, whose work often involved operating in front of the Allied trenches to sketch enemy emplacements.   Later in life, he described a typical patrol into no man's land:

"I advanced in short rushes, mostly on my hands and knees with my sketching kit dangling round my neck. As I slowly approached, the wood gradually took a more definite shape, and as I crept nearer I saw that what was hidden from our own line, now revealed itself as a cunningly contrived observation post in one of the battered trees."

Adrian was the first artist to be commissioned by the newly-created Imperial War Museum to record scenes on the Western Front.  Between 1917 and 1919 he made 180 pen-and-ink drawings showing the examples of the devastation in France and Belgium and the work of troops of different nationalities in the trenches.

"Behind Gavrelle" Adrian Hill

After his First World War service, Adrian studied at the Royal College of Art before working as an artist.  In 1938, while convalescing from tuberculosis at the King Edward VII Sanatorium in Midhurst, he passed the time by drawing nearby objects from his hospital bed.  Adrian found that helped his recovery. In 1939, occupational therapy was introduced to the sanatorium for the first time and Ardian was invited to teach drawing and painting to other patients - at first to injured soldiers returning from the war, and then to general civilian patients.  He found that the practice of Art seemed to help to divert the patients and to relieve their mental distress.

Adrian noticed that art appreciation also aided recovery from illness and he became involved with the British Red Cross Society, setting up a scheme whereby reproductions of famous artists' works were lent to hospital wards all over the country. Speakers were also booked to talk to patients about their artworks. By 1950 this picture-lending scheme had spread to nearly 200 hospitals, and there was a waiting list.

The artist Edward Adamson joined the program in 1946 as it was extended to the long-stay mental asylums, and started classes at Netherne Hospital in Surrey.  Adrian apparently coined the term "art therapy" in 1942 and in 1945, he published his ideas in a book entitled "Art Versus Illness".