The recently-published will of a famed psychiatrist has arranged for £5.2 million ($8.3 million) to be donated to Scotland’s biggest art museums, the Scotsman reported Monday. Together with his wife, the psychiatrist Sula Wolff, Henry Walton established a commanding art collection during their lifetimes, including 300 paintings, most of which were later given to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art for display.
Born and educated in South Africa, Walton moved to the U.K. after World War II, eventually becoming a senior registrar at the Maudsley Hospital in London in the mid-1950s. While in London, he met the Berlin-born Wolff, whose family had left Germany after Hitler was elected chancellor, and the two eventually became a veritable power couple of contemporary psychiatry. Walton was a senior lecturer at Edinburgh University with speaking engagements around the world, co-authoring a widely read paperback titled “Alcoholism,” and Wolff earned renown for authoring an opus on child psychiatry, titled “Children Under Stress.”
Together, the two amassed an immense collection of art, including Japanese design, Chinese porcelain, African sculpture, and paintings by Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Georges Braque, Francisco Goya, and Rembrandt van Rijn. “The National Galleries of Scotland is delighted to be receiving a major gift from the estate of the late Professor Henry Walton,” a spokesperson said, expressing gratitude for the trust fund established by the Waltons for the museums to continue developing their collections of art.
— Reid Singer
