Walford Graham Robertson (1866-1948)
Provenance
Walford Graham Robertson, gifted toKerrison Preston, and thence by descent
The influence of Robertson's friends Burne-Jones and Rossetti is clear in this Pre-Raphaelitic watercolour. While the figure anxiously keeping vigil at the window is borrowed from Burne-Jones's Dorigen of Bretagne (1871), the medieval jewel tones are extracted from Rossetti's early works, described by Robertson as 'pure lyrics in water colour'.
Like Burne-Jones, Robertson seems to have taken 'no advantage of [water colour's] transparency', preferring to 'load on body colour and paint thickly in gouache' (Time Was, p 83).
Burne-Jones remained a friend and inspiration to Robertson, who championed the artist's trademark 'dreamy sadness' with 'boding glances of wistful women' - and while some remarked that such pictures were 'tricks which grew monotonous by repetition', Robertson argued that 'all painting is a trick ... O, that 'Burne-Jones' trick, how many - myself among the number - thought they had found it out and could reproduce it' (p 85).
Robertson wrote that Burne-Jones, 'saw colour with the eye of a jeweller; certain spaces in his design were to be filled up with various hues so as to make up a beautiful pattern [...] Some of his pictures, 'Laus Veneris' for instance, were like clusters of many-coloured gems or stained windows through which shone the evening sun.' (Time Was, p 82)
It's possible that this, along with the other watercolours in this exhibition, was exhibited at the Carfax Gallery in their 1906 exhibition of Robertson's paintings, drawings and prints.