Cartwheels by Eric Robertson ready to hang canvas print

31 x 43 cm ready to hang black framed canvas featuring artwork Cartwheels, by Eric Robertson, from the National Galleries of Scotland Collection.

For a brief period after the First World War, Robertson adopted an unusual semi-abstract style, which has affinities with the Vorticist work of Wyndham Lewis and William Roberts. Scottish painters were generally slow or unwilling to adopt the avant-garde styles sweeping across Europe in the 1920s, making this an unusual and important work in early twentieth-century Scottish art.

Robertson was one of the most gifted students of his generation. Born in Dumfries, he moved to Edinburgh at the turn of the twentieth century and befriended the Symbolist painter, John Duncan, who became an important influence on his work. He was also inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and the French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau. Robertson featured in several group shows from 1912-4, which led to the formation of The Edinburgh Group in 1919. During the War, he was stationed with the Friends Ambulance Unit where he began to paint more landscapes, yet it is his nude figure compositions, which scandalised Edinburgh society, that he is perhaps most associated. In 1923, following the failure of his marriage he moved to Liverpool and by the early 1930s, he was largely forgotten as a painter.