"A bruised reed shall he not break": John Miles's portraits of patients at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum. Part 1.

Abstract

This is the first of two papers which examine a series of portraits of patients at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum (REA) which were undertaken in the 1880s by John Miles, who, as well as being a professional painter, was also an inmate of the Morningside institution. The portraits by John Miles are of interest for several reasons. They are an example of patient art, only a small portion of which has survived from nineteenth century asylums. They are also in the tradition of patient portraiture. Miles's work is of interest because he was both a professional artist and a patient. His portraits also provide some insight into the patients' world: their appearance, demeanour, posture, clothing and their surroundings in the asylum. The patients in the portraits have been identified and their case notes examined. This information complements Miles's portraits and helps to build up a fuller picture of individual patients and their life in the Morningside Asylum. The case notes also reveal the symptomatology and behaviour of the patients. Alongside the portraits by Miles, we discuss a second series of portraits of the same patients and contained in a collection entitled 'Bruised Reeds'. We discuss if these portraits were also by Miles.