Robert Brook

Artist: Robert Brook
Medium: Pen & Ink Wash on Board
Size: 12" x 16" (310mm x 410mm)
Date: 1969

This is the original Pen & Ink Wash by Robert Brook.

Charles Lamb and his sister were driven from one lodging to another by local gossip about how Mary Lamb had suffered a brainstorm and stabbed her mother to death. Charles and his sister Mary both suffered periods of mental illness.

On 22 September 1796, a terrible event occurred: Mary, "worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery by attention to needlework by day and to her mother at night," was seized with acute mania and stabbed her mother to the heart with a table knife.