A collection of “really relatable” and “inspiring” artwork by Charlotte Johnson Wahl, the mother of former prime minister Boris Johnson, is to go on display at the world’s oldest psychiatric hospital.
The exhibition called What It Felt Like will feature paintings the artist, who died in 2021 at the age of 79, created during her time as a patient at London’s Maudsley Hospital in 1974.
Mrs Johnson Wahl “never hid” her struggles with mental health, including food phobias, and her work “let the hospital know” that she “didn’t have a great time”, according to Colin Gale, director of the Bethlem Museum of the Mind where the exhibition will be held, and which is based in another former London psychiatric hospital.
Mr Gale told the PA news agency: “She was an artist in her own right who probably never achieved the recognition that she probably deserved in her lifetime outside her wide circle of friends and family, and her work is not widely represented in museum collections.
“We’ve been wanting to do this exhibition for years, but it’s probably truer to say that we never thought it would be possible because it would rely on being in networks that we maybe didn’t have access to.
“Our exhibition is very tightly focused on the period of work that was done by Charlotte Johnson Wahl over a period of nine months while she was a patient at the Maudsley Hospital, our sister hospital in Camberwell.
“It’s a period of time she’s never hidden. She’s always been completely open in her lifetime, always completely upfront and transparent about why she was there, and her experiences there.
“But it’s the art which has this incredible documentary character because she painted what she saw, she turned her eye to everyday life within the institution.
“She didn’t have a great time, and she let the hospital know it.”
According to Mr Gale, Mrs Johnson Wahl persuaded the hospital to have a private viewing of her work in its boardroom while she was a patient, and gave the institution a painting called It Has Not Worked, which shows her hands flung out in despair.
The museum director said Mrs Johnson Wahl felt that after her time in Maudsley, she was “no better off” and left the painting as “one in the eye for the hospital”.
Despite the paintings’ challenging subject matter, Mr Gale said Mrs Johnson Wahl “retained her sense of humour”, particularly with the work Canteen With No Food, which depicted the hospital’s dining area filled with patients with nothing to eat, because of her food phobia.
Mr Gale said he hoped the exhibition would inspire others struggling with their mental health, adding: “It’s about inspiring people to come loose of that stigma (around mental health) and talk about struggles they’re having.
“So the exhibition is called What It Felt Like, because we feel that is a good description of precisely what she was trying to do with her (work).
“Some of it is really, really relatable, if for whatever reason, you’re hospitalised and separated from a young family for which you’ve got responsibility, it’s entirely natural that is going to be really anxiety-inducing. So there are some pictures that reflect that.
“What I hope about it is people say, ‘oh yeah, the Mrs Johnson clan’, but I hope actually, the interest will come not in who they are, but just because this is so relatable as an experience of family rupture.”
Mrs Johnson Wahl married Stanley Johnson, an author and former MEP, in 1963 and they divorced in 1979. She is also mother to former government minister Lord Jo Johnson, broadcaster Rachel Johnson and youngest son Leo Johnson.
What It Felt Like will run at Bethlem Museum of the Mind in Beckenham from December 11 to March 29 2025, with admission free.
Based in the 1930s administration building of Bethlem Royal Hospital, the museum aims to celebrate the lives and achievements of those living with mental health conditions.
