Corrine Wong takes a stroll through some of history's most creative patients and their conditions

We all know famous artists, or at least can recognise a few names. Renoir, Van Gogh, Monet, Matisse, Edvard Munch, etc. We think of their paintings of fruit bowls, flowers, undressed ladies, and other subjects in their heavy frames, hanging in museums and art galleries, each with a price tag equivalent or more to a holiday in space.

We contemplate their art, but do we contemplate the artists? Their work must have been shaped by their lives, and therefore their health. As human beings, they must have suffered medical conditions, and you wonder if great works of art could have been influenced by the artist's illness. Following that vein, could art have been influenced by medicine, or the lack of it?

Claude Monet

Take for example, Monet. One of the leading figures in Impressionism, his was the hand that painted the water lilies series (1899-1908), which were done on huge canvasses in a specially built studio. The pieces we usually see in books, magazines, and cards are actually part of a huge all- encompassing painting, which surrounds the viewer. It was what he intended, as he was obsessed with light and colours and wanted to have flowers everywhere, all year round.

Monet had severe astigmatism, and was once fitted with a pair of glasses. "The world looks like that? I will paint no more!" he exclaimed, flinging them away. He later suffered from cataracts, and his failing eyesight is obvious in his later paintings (see the Japanese bridge in Giverny). The colours shimmer more, the subject becomes less focused, and yellow tones are used more liberally. As a result, the paintings look more surreal, as if seen through a haze of a dream. Monet underwent a cataract operation in 1922, but why he did not have it done earlier is unclear. One possible reason is that the postoperative period of recovery of sight was long, and he wanted to finish his project first.

Edgar Degas

An artist would be highly dependent on his sight, obviously. "Love is engendered in the eyes," according to Shakespeare. Well, so is art. If you cannot see you cannot paint. That does not mean that you cannot create. Degas was another artist afflicted with failing sight. His frequent themes were aspects of urban French life: racetracks, cabarets, circus rings, theatres, and music halls. His paintings (before his eyesight deteriorated) of dancers at ballet practice are beautiful studies of movement, capturing them in suspended, coloured arabesques. However, in the 1870s, his blindness was slowly, inexorably overtaking him. Degas began using more pastels and produced high coloured shadows. When he was almost totally blind, he moved on to sculpture, depending on memory and sense of touch to mould wax figures of ballerinas and horses. Degas retreated into himself, bitter and isolated, saying, "Everything is trying for a blind man who wants to make believe that he can see."

Pierre Auguste Renoir

Failing eyesight is not the only condition that holds terror for an artist. The loss of the use of his hands, the only method of conveying his artistic expression, held Renoir in thrall. He suffered severe rheumatoid arthritis, with his hands becoming more and more deformed. Even so, art enthusiasts claimed that the quality of his work did not diminish. Renoir was terrified of the day when he would no longer be able to hold a brush. Progressive stiffness caused him to walk with two canes, and he had much difficulty moving between his home and his studio, thus limiting his painting time. Renoir's condition worsened, and consequently he had to abandon his canes for crutches, and then finally be confined to a wheelchair. The threat of complete paralysis spurred him on to bursts of activity, frantically painting before he had to stop forever. Without non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and steroid therapy he placed great hopes on the curative waters at spas, but his arthritis did not improve. Later Renoir had to have someone put his paintbrush into his gnarled fingers before he started painting, as his fingers were more or less immobile, but his elbow and shoulder still functioned.

Art as Playstation substitute

Sometimes, it is not the illness that affects the style of the artist, but the event of being ill itself. Many got their calling during periods of convalescence. It probably has to do with being confined in bed for long periods of time with little to do. Without television or Playstations, they turn to pencils, charcoal, and paints. Examples are Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Edvard Munch.

Henri Matisse

Matisse always said he was an accidental artist. He studied law, but while recovering from an attack of appendicitis in 1890 he started drawing and painting. Matisse is now regarded as one of the most important French painters of the 20th century. His style is varied, covering many different styles of painting, from Impressionism to near abstraction. Also known as the "King of Fauves," he was diagnosed with duodenal cancer in 1941. In the later stages of his life he was too weak to paint at his easel. Thereupon, from his wheelchair, he created his series of colourful paper cutouts, which include the much celebrated "Blue Nudes."

Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch (of "The Scream" fame) was always sick as a child (rheumatic fever), and was often bedridden. Hence, there was plenty of time to develop his artistic talent. His life was dogged by disease and death (his mother died when he was 5, his sister died when he was 14). Unsurprisingly, his artwork revolved frequently around illness and death--for example, "The Sick Child."

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Toulouse-Lautrec was also of weak constitution as a child, perhaps due to the fact that his parents were first cousins. It was suggested that he had osteogenesis imperfecta. In 1878 he broke both legs, and spent his convalescence drawing and painting. However, after the fractures, his legs stopped growing, although his torso matured normally. As his adolescence progressed, he became "a grotesque dwarf (4.5 feet), with a thick nose, swollen and puffy lips, a retreating chin, and a strange waddling walk." Deprived of the physical life that a normal body would have permitted, Toulouse-Lautrec lived completely for his art.

Toulouse-Lautrec, like Degas, his friend and teacher, loved the Parisian night world of cabarets, bars, and brothels, all which he frequented and painted. He was a regular at the Moulin Rouge, for which he painted cheerful posters. He lived the high life, and adored wine and women, albeit a tad too much. By the mid 1890s he had contracted syphilis and was a chronic alcoholic. His alcoholism was taking its toll on his heart and his art. In 1899 he suffered delirium tremens, and was admitted to a clinic, where he drew from memory, a series of circus drawings. Upon discharge, he started drinking again. In 1901 he was struck down by a paralytic stroke and was forced to give up painting.

Paul Gauguin

Art can occasionally refer to the disease of the artist. Gauguin suffered a chronic sore on his left ankle, which had refused to heal for more than two years. This was during his self imposed exile in Tahiti, and he thought the poor healing was due to the tropical climate. It was later discovered that it was a complication of his syphilis, which eventually led to his death in 1903. In his last years Gauguin's mobility was severely restricted, and he endured considerable pain, on account of his ankle. His work, which was influenced greatly by the native symbolism of Tahiti, included a wood carving of Christ on the Cross. The left foot of Christ is given greater prominence than any other part of the carving, thus referring to the source of Gauguin's physical suffering, his infected ankle. This piece therefore, has autobiographical significance.

Vincent Van Gogh

We cannot have a discussion of artists and their illnesses without some mention of Van Gogh. His was not a physical affliction but a mental one. His personal demon was basically himself. He was sent to a boarding school as a child and didn't receive much affection from his parents. Growing up, he had numerous career and romantic pursuits. Unfortunately, all ended in failure. He had tried his hand at being an art dealer (like his brother, Theo), a teacher, a clerk, a bookseller, and a pastor (he scared churchgoers away because he was too passionate about religion), before settling to be an artist. Although he paved the way for Expressionism, he sold only one painting in his lifetime, and cheaply at that. He had very little money throughout his life. Van Gogh constantly hungered for approval and friendship, but was socially hopeless. He was also always looking for love, but he was so shy and clumsy at relationships that he never managed to maintain a long term one. "I feel a failure," he wrote to his brother. "That's it as far as I'm concerned--I feel that this is the destiny that I accept, that will never change." His accumulation of failures amounted to an onset of depression, which later on progressed to a bipolar affective disorder.

Van Gogh's mood began to sour while he was in France, surrounded by many great painters of the day. His awkwardness in social interactions began to take its toll. He was plagued by extreme shifts in his emotional state. Mania and feelings of grandiosity were always followed by self loathing and deep despair. His artwork provides us with a vivid record of the seesaw activity of his brain's chemistry. When he began to slip into depression, his paintings would take on a deep, dark feeling of doom, with only hints of light optimism remaining (see "Starry night over the Rhone"). As the depression deepened, his canvasses became dark vessels of hopelessness.

Amazingly, gradually, a complete reversal would always occur, catapulting him into a frenzy of grandiosity and creative activity as the mania took hold. His paintings would become electric with brilliant colours, and the canvas textures jumped to life with jittery strokes of paint, somehow mirroring his manic state of mind.

Occasionally, in his mania, he would eat his own paints (which probably did not improve his sanity) and be terribly violent. It was during one of his manic episodes that he had his famous argument with Gauguin, a fellow artist living with him then. Van Gogh attacked Gauguin, who then fled. Later, Van Gogh was filled with distress, because he felt truly alone. He blamed himself for always impressing his ideas on people and not listening enough. In his fit of mad remorse, he cut off part of his left ear and ran into the street shouting "Gauguin, come back! You can have my ear, I'm ready to listen to you!" Gauguin didn't come back.

Without the existence of lithium, or antipsychotics, these self destructive episodes became more and more frequent until Van Gogh's suicide in 1890. His last painting "Wheat Field with Crows" seems ominous. The road in the centre leads to nowhere, and crows are known to be harbingers of doom. The colours and paint application shows uncontrolled violence. A few days after the painting was finished, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest at the very wheat field he was painting. He was 37 years old.

Undeniably, psychiatric ailments are not uncommon among artists. Many a work of art has been the result of some episode of psychosis, or mania. Van Gogh, while a voluntary patient in an asylum, painted feverishly, producing 143 paintings in one year. Richard Dadd, whose early works already possessed a remarkable imaginative power, entered a completely new dimension of intensity after he became insane and murdered his father in 1843. His "Contradiction. Oberon and Titania," produced in Broadmoor prison, is in Tate Britain.

If artists are not mad they would be at least called eccentric (think of Dali and Escher). Many suffer nervous breakdowns at some point. Edvard Munch had psychotic episodes in 1908. It was thought to be due to excessive work and alcohol. He underwent electroconvulsive therapy (plus massage, as was recommended at that time).

Depression is the artist's common drinking mate. Perhaps it's because they feel more than others do, or simply because they can express it better than others, but depression has affected many an artist's style. Picasso fell into a state of depression after his best friend committed suicide, over unrequited love, and thus began his Blue Period, where mostly blue tones were used. Constable, a renowned English landscape artist, suffered a depressive episode after his beloved wife died, saying that "the face of the world is totally changed to me." He darkened his work. It became more elemental, with thundery clouds and desolate marsh, reflecting his mood.

How health affects a person is always interesting, but what makes it fascinating in an artist is that it is expressed in his work. He puts his essence into his creations, which are perceivable, tangible, and give us understanding. Besides allowing us to see the world through his eyes, he shows us his fears, his pain, and his hopes. Not only do we get aesthetic gratification from the results, we achieve a greater sense of empathy and learn the limitations of humanity, thus the benefit is ours.

I thank Huiling Kerr for her help and for accompanying me to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam; Yen Mei; and Peter Freedman for his help, his book, and for sharing his enthusiasm in art with me.