Beschreibung:

Signed and dated 1920, oil on canvas 101.5cm x 152.5cm (40 x 60in) Provenance: By direct descent from the artist to the present owner Exhibited: Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 94th Annual Exhibition, 1920 Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Autumn Exhibition, 1921 National Portrait Society, Grafton Galleries, London, 11th Annual Exhibition, 1921 Literature: E. A. Taylor, 'The Royal Scottish Academy', The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art, London, vol. LXXX, no. 329, August 1920, p.21, ill. b/w p.22 In 1919, Eric Robertson returned to Edinburgh after serving in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit during World War One. He and his wife, the artist Cecile Walton were founding members of the exhibiting society the Edinburgh Group, which re-formed that year; other members included Dorothy Johnstone D. M. Sutherland and William Oliphant Hutchison The Group mounted post-war exhibitions at the New Gallery in Shandwick Place in 1919, 1920 and 1921. Reviews of the 1920 exhibition praised the Group for its ‘splendid achievement’, whilst Robertson was declared to have ‘genius’, with his portraits and figure studies posessing a ‘rare imaginative quality’.[i] Moreover, reviews of Robertson’s solo exhibition at The Petit Salon in Edinburgh that Spring praised Robertson’s ‘imaginative designs’ and described his work as being ‘full of subtle provocation’.[ii] Late that Summer, Robertson and Walton moved to 48 Lauriston Place near to Edinburgh College of Art, in which they could both have a studio. As their joint biographer John Kemplay has declared: ‘It was at Lauriston Place that they enacted the final setting of their marriage and within three years their brilliant achievements as artists…would end, never to be recaptured.’[iii] It was during this propitious period that Robertson painted the impressive The Rose Fan of 1920. As noted in the artist’s records, held in a private archive, the sitter is Miss Maisie Luman and this was Robertson’s fifty-first oil painting. It is a celebration of the beauty and sophistication of young womanhood. The elegant Miss Luman reclines on a chaise longue and turns her head to meet the viewer’s gaze. Restrained sensuality abounds, as her bare skin is striking in comparison with the opulent evening gown she wears, whose skirt layers are masterfully rendered. Indeed, Robertson’s skills as a draughtsman are plain to see, particularly in the passages of fabric not only in his model’s outfit, but also in the realisation of the cushion which provides support, the material on which she sits and that which is hung behind her. Details including the positioning of her fingers on the titular fan and the pattern on this accessory itself, add to the feeling of luxury which pervades the painting. Robertson sent The Rose Fan to the Royal Scottish Academy in the year it was painted. In his review of the Academy’s Annual Exhibition, the artist, designer and critic E. A. Taylor wrote that the portraits by Robertson on display were ‘distinctly personal…notably his The Rose Fan and Cecile.’ The latter presumably referred to an image of Robertson’s wife. In 1921, The Rose Fan was shown in London, when it was included in the National Portrait Society’s 11th annual exhibition. [i] As quoted in Elizabeth Cumming and John Kemplay, The Edinburgh Group, Edinburgh 1983, p.7. [ii] Frederic Quinton, ‘The Faun-Mind in Modern Art’, The Scots Pictorial, 10 April 1920, pp.420-21. [iii] John Kemplay, The Two Companions: The Story of Two Scottish Artists – Eric Robertson and Cecile Walton Edinburgh 1991, p. 90.