A ward in a London hospital no. 2 is a dramatic gouache painting which addresses Leon Kossoff’s definitive themes of mortality and angst. The narrow picture plane and elevated perspective give a strong emphasis to the receding row of hospital beds. Most of the beds are occupied by recumbent figures. The nature of their ailments is unclear, but an aura of sickness and struggle pervades the scene. The only standing figure is a nurse at the foot of a bed in the foreground, distinguished by a slash of white which suggests her apron. Another row of beds is visible across the ward on the right. The room is a cavernous chamber with a high ceiling, darkened walls, heavy curtains, and lino flooring of cerise red. The mood is one of foreboding, and this is underpinned by the rushing sensation created by the ingenious manipulation of single-point perspective, which gives a heady momentum to the spatial recession of the room.

This and other contemporaneous gouaches differ from Kossoff’s oil paintings of the period, in which thickly applied and heavily worked paint swirled around the subject it evoked. The water-based medium of gouache and the paper support used here prevented the same degree of vigorous re-working, though the same energy and force of workmanship are apparent. Thick outlines in earth colours are used to define the skulls and facial features of the nurse and the patients, as well as to evoke the shape of the room. The dominant colours of this gouache are ultramarine blue and warm flesh pink, the brilliance of which lends warmth and light to the otherwise sorrowful atmosphere of the picture.

This gouache was made by Kossoff around the time that he suffered an appendicitis. He was admitted to the old Charing Cross Hospital and evidently passed his convalescence studying the mortal atmosphere of his surroundings. A number of works relate to this experience, all of which were presumably made after he was discharged from hospital. Another gouache of the same title and date, A ward in a London hospital no. 1, also depicts a hospital ward with two rows of beds and standing figures moving around the darkened space, though in contrast it uses a horizontal format with conventional proportions. A ward in a London hospital no. 2 is distinctive for its narrow upright shape, which contributes considerably to the dynamism of the composition. All of Kossoff’s hospital ward works have a subdued atmosphere akin to Henry Moore’s wartime shelter drawings (fig. 1). In both cases, two parallel rows of recumbent figures carry overtones of a mortuary.

This gouache was included in Kossoff’s only solo exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art, held in April 1968. Kossoff found his way to the Marlborough like many of those artists who were represented by Helen Lessore and the Beaux Arts Gallery until its closure in 1965. His friends and contemporaries Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach and Craigie Aitchison followed the same path, though Auerbach was the only artist who spent the rest of his career with the gallery. Kossoff’s exhibition included only two gouaches, the two depictions of a London hospital ward (nos. 36 and 37). These works relate to two paintings in the exhibition, Woman ill in bed surrounded by family (1965, Tate Collection) (no. 12) (fig. 2) and Man ill in bed (1967, Private Collection). The Tate Collection work relates to a period in which both the artist’s wife and his sister-in-law were ill. Though neither of these two other works depict hospital subjects, they nevertheless demonstrate the artist’s preoccupation with human frailty and emotional climaxes in everyday life. Beside these works, Kossoff’s Marlborough exhibition was largely composed of figure subjects, building sites, and the railway landscape around Kings Cross.