Sheridan Russell
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{{Use British English|date=July 2014}}
Sheridan William Robin Russell (23 March 1900 – 9 April 1991) was a cellist, hospital social worker, and patron of the arts. He was Head Almoner at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and founded the Paintings in Hospitals charity.{{cite web|url=http://www.queensquare.org.uk/archives/about/artwork|title=Queen Square Archives – Artwork|access-date=13 August 2014}}{{Cite ODNB|id=70246|title=Sheridan William Robin Russell (1900–1991)
|last=Willmott|first=Phyllis|orig-date=23 September 2004|date=4 October 2007}}
Biography
Russell was the younger son of the professor of singing and the San Carlo and later Boston Opera director Henry Russell and his wife, Nina ({{nee|Andrade}}). He was partially of Jewish descent through his parents and of Spanish and Portuguese descent through his mother. He was born in Mayfair, London.
Russell did not speak until he was three years old. At five years of age, he began to learn the cello. As a child in Paris, he was frequently taken to lunch with Claude Debussy. It was Debussy who diagnosed Russell as being partially deaf.{{Cite book|title=Prisms of Light...Reflections of Shattered Glass: Our flight from the Holocaust|last=Klein Gompers|first=Gertrude|publisher=Xlibris, Corp.|year=2010|isbn=978-1453545911|pages=239}} He also knew many musicians, singers, conductors and composers, including Mary Garden, André Caplet, Felix Weingartner, Landon Ronald, Freya Stark and Thelma Reiss. He initially trained as a cellist, attending the Guildhall School of Music, where he was taught by W. H. Squire, and later had lessons with Guilhermina Suggia and Felix Salmond. He played quintets professionally with the Léner Quartet in the late 1920s, and gave the earliest performances in England of cello concertos by Paul Hindemith and Arthur Honegger.{{cite journal|author=Russell, Sheridan |title=Musicians, painters and writers I have known |year=1973 |journal=Journal of the British Institute of Recorded Sound |issue=49 |pages=164–170}}
During World War II, Russell worked at Bletchley Park and then for British Intelligence in Italy.{{Cite book|title=Sheridan's Story|last=Russell|first=Sheridan|publisher=Kit Russell, William Barnes, E. J. B. Rose, Simon May|year=1993|pages=110–115}} In 1945, he trained as a hospital social worker, and is described by Phyllis Willmott in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as the "first male student in an entirely female profession". He worked at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, and was known as Britain's first male almoner.{{Cite book|title=Father and Daughter: Patriarchy, Gender, and Social Science|last=Ann|first=Oakley|publisher=Policy Press|year=2014|isbn=9781447318118|location=Bristol|pages=116|oclc=892844009}} He said in a 1972 lecture that he was motivated to start the initiative to place original artworks in hospitals by the way in which reproductions were "treated rather like furniture which nobody really looked at", adding that he preferred "less good but original paintings". Two of the first artists that he persuaded to lend paintings were Jacob Epstein and Matthew Smith.
He married the social worker and university teacher Katherine Stewart, known as "Kit", on 1 June 1957. He appeared as a castaway on the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 4 April 1970.{{cite web |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/485004e6#p009nfkr |title=Desert Island Discs – Castaway : Sheridan Russell |publisher=BBC Online |access-date=13 August 2014}} After his hospital career, Russell began to play the cello in public again and organised concerts of chamber music for children, and informal soirées with musician friends at the couple's home in Cheyne Walk, described by David Piachaud in The Guardian as "unrehearsed and uninhibited" and "usually brilliant".
Russell died at his home in London on 9 April 1991. A book on him, Sheridan's Story, was published privately by his wife in 1993, and all 1800 copies were sold. Piachaud describes him as a "bright-eyed elfin figure of warmth and wit".{{cite news |author=Piachaud, David |title=Obituary: Kit Russell: The science of people |newspaper=The Guardian |date=17 July 1998 |page=20}}
References
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Category:20th-century British musicians
Category:20th-century cellists
Category:Alumni of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Category:English people of Jewish descent
Category:English people of Portuguese descent
Category:English people of Spanish descent