The pencil drawing for this painting, from the collection of Marianne Haile, was exhibited: London, Birch and Conran, Sam Haile, October - November 1987, number 14, illustrated in the catalogue. The vibrant, flowerlike colours of Sam Haile's masterpiece Then Lie There, Precious White Psychiatrist are not a contradiction to the morbid atmosphere of decay and violence of the imagery, but an expression of the artist's attitude towards it. Sam Haile fought with lucidity and determination to express his views on the whole of the aesthetic, social and political reality. Driven by his own questionings, Sam Haile set out to fragment explore the surrealist world of the subconscious. Like his hand-written notes, which determinably question the definitions of art, his fragmentation of reality in Then Lie There, Precious White Psychiatrist challenges reality, throwing the world as we know it into disarray.
Purchased from the artist c.1947 Private collection to 1994
Aldeburgh Festival Exhibition, Peter Pears Gallery, 9 -24 June 2006, catalogue number 18