File:Painting by Cayley Robinson Wellcome L0051533.jpg

Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org The painting shows representatives of the civilian population in a courtyard outside the hospital. They include a mother nursing a baby, children, and mature people including a man resembling Cayley Robinson himself (the scholar wearing a brown cloak, left). The traditional architecture provides an aged man with a ledge to take the weight off his legs. On the right a woman requests help for her young daughter from a doctor at the entrance to the hospital. In the centre a dead tree with a snake in its branches bears a pessimistic message for human beings as the descendants of Adam and Eve: "Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return". On the left, a comet passes through the sky over a terrace of Fitzrovia townhouses (the terrace continuing from the previous painting in the pair) 1916 By: Frederic Cayley RobinsonPublished: 1916.