Sheridan Russell

Sheridan William Robin Russell (23 March 1900 – 9 April 1991) was a cellist, hospital social worker, and patron of the arts. He was Head Almoner at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and founded the Paintings in Hospitals charity.

Biography Russell was the younger son of the professor of singing and the San Carlo and later Boston Opera director Henry Russell and his wife, Nina . He was partially of Jewish descent through his parents and of Spanish and Portuguese descent through his mother. He was born in Mayfair, London. He also knew many musicians, singers, conductors and composers, including Mary Garden, André Caplet, Felix Weingartner, Landon Ronald, Freya Stark and Thelma Reiss. He initially trained as a cellist, attending the Guildhall School of Music, where he was taught by W. H. Squire, and later had lessons with Guilhermina Suggia and Felix Salmond. He played quintets professionally with the Léner Quartet in the late 1920s, and gave the earliest performances in England of cello concertos by Paul Hindemith and Arthur Honegger.

During World War II, Russell worked at Bletchley Park In 1945, he trained as a hospital social worker, He said in a 1972 lecture that he was motivated to start the initiative to place original artworks in hospitals by the way in which reproductions were "treated rather like furniture which nobody really looked at", adding that he preferred "less good but original paintings". After his hospital career, Russell began to play the cello in public again and organised concerts of chamber music for children,