Famous Individuals in the Arts and Their Illnesses

10.30 Arrive & register

10.45 – 11.50

Beethoven: Deafness was far from his only health challenge

Beethoven’s deafness is well known. From an unparalleled quantity of documented material this lecture will describe in his own words the impact of his deafness on his mental and physical health and on his phenomenal outputs. The talk is also richly illustrated with extracts of recordings of his works. Less well known, is the decline in his physical health and failure of many of his organs – the causes which will be discussed. Clearly dying, and in the most appalling physical distress, he was able to produce works such as the 9th Symphony, ironically based on the Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’ – a contradiction that defies credulity. In a final twist the lecture will show that laboratory analysis in the past 5 years of Beethoven’s Christmas cards have helped unravel the cause of his health problems!

11.50 – 12.10 Break

12. 10 -1.10

Renoir: How someone so disabled could produce works of such extreme beauty is a complete mystery, even to his own son

This lecture is a biography of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, with a particular emphasis on the development of his rheumatoid arthritis and how that affected his life and his art. Renoir was already well into middle age when he developed his arthritis and in this talk, I describe how it developed, and using his diaries and other sources, provide details of how it affected him and what treatments he sought. My particular focus is on what adaptations were needed to allow him to carry on painting, despite marked disability and excruciating pain, to the end of his life. The talk is illustrated with several of his works of art, and defying the audience to understand, how despite such disability, he could continue to paint and sculpture. The role of his family, and indeed of his cats, in helping him manage adds to the human interest

13.10 – 14.25 Lunch

14.25 – 15.30 Lecture and Questions/discussion

Dicken’s great hardship and pain often reflected in his novels

In addition to being a prolific author, Dickens was a performer: he was at his most contented when giving public readings from his books. Looking at his life we should not ignore his traumatic early childhood which was replayed in his novels. Yet his later life was suffused with pain and psychological traumas as well as suffering from some unmentionable disorders! How sad though that he was suffering so much that he had to cancel going to a ball put on by the Queen at Buckingham Palace at the end of his illustrious career

Biography

Alan Silman is an eminent Professor of Medicine and a Research Fellow at Oxford University, prior to that he was Medical Director of the charity Arthritis Research UK.

He is passionate about the arts and has researched intensively the medical history of well-known individuals. From this research, he has developed a series of lectures addressing how the lives and outputs, of such individuals were affected by their health. These talks have been given widely to a variety of audiences across the UK.

In his spare time, he is a lover of theatre and an amateur drama enthusiast, and he directed his first play in 2024!