Friday, March 13, 2015

Eric H.W. Robertson: Both Traditional and Modernist

Scottish painter Eric Harald Macbeth Robertson (1887-1941) is essentially a cipher, so far as information about him on the Internet is concerned. In fact, most of what I could find regarding him was on this Wikipedia entry dealing with his first wife, Cecile Walton (1891-1956), daughter of the Glasgow Boy, Edward Arthur Walton.

The link above mentions that he was trained in architecture, but shifted his attention to painting. From the evidence of a photo of him in uniform in the link along with a painting (see below), Robertson served in some capacity in the Great War. Finally, it seems that he was a heavy drinker, this affecting his peculiar marriage arrangement and quite likely his artistic career.

So why am I bothering to write about Robertson? Because he is one of those painters who flipped back and forth between traditional painting and various degrees of modernism -- sometimes even working those styles at around the same time. Moreover, I find many of his images appealing. Others seem to be of the same mind because, even though there is essentially no biographical information, the Internet has a fair number of images of his paintings.

Gallery

Spring - 1913

Beauty Luxuriant - ca. 1919?

Shellburst

Robert the Bruce and de Bohun

The Daughters of Beauty (part)

Cartwheels - ca. 1920-21

Dance Rhythm

Cecile - 1922

Wynne Walker (the artist's later wife) - ca. 1924

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi - I'm interested in the Dance Rhythm painting in this post - do you know who owns it? Where did you find the image?
I am curating the show A New Era: Scottish Modern Art 1900-50 for the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and would love to include it, or something similar.
Thank you,
Alice Strang
astrang@nationalgalleries.org

Anonymous said...

our family, wel my borther and i now own beauty luxuriant that you have shown here. We grew up with her in our living room. she is very beautiful , the colours and gentle resting pose. we share her as we both felt it would not be fair for one of us to fully own her when our father passed away. we feel very privileged to be able to gaze on her person