Albert’s famous brother William Rothenstein was one of most celebrated and successful portrait artists of his time; probably for this exact reason, Albert - who eventually adopted the anglicised name Rutherston - exhibited a series of stylised watercolours on silk for his first one-man show in 1910. Ranging from decorative panels, costume designs and imaginative illustrations, his new pictures were lighthearted and playful, and very different from his brother’s work. His biographer Gleadowe noted that  Albert had a great “desire to stand independently from his contemporaries,” as someone who “eschewed dogmas, creeds, schools and shibboleths.”

In this watercolour on silk - ‘Romance’ - a suitor seems to chivalrously insist, “After you!”, as he gestures towards a rocky precipice.