Adrian Hill

Later in life, Hill recalled a typical such 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.

[5] 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, and found the process helpful in aiding his own recovery.

[4] Hill believed that art appreciation also aided recovery from illness and was involved, with the British Red Cross Society, in setting up a scheme whereby reproductions of famous artists' works were lent to hospital wards all over the country.

[4][6] The Adamson Collection of about 6000 drawings, paintings, ceramics and sculptures by people compelled to live at Netherne was at Lambeth Hospital in South London between 1997 and 2012, and has now being re-located to the Wellcome Library in anticipation of a securer future in several international institutions.

Hill thought that when the patient's physical resistance was at its lowest this somehow rendered the "animal ego" quiescent and allowed the creative powers of the "spiritual essence" to come through in works of art.