The Rise and Fall of Robert Colquhoun (1914-1962) and Robert MacBryde (1913-1966)
Born and brought up in Ayrshire to poor, working-class families, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde met at The Glasgow School of Art in the 1930s. They moved to London in 1941 and quickly became associated with the neo-romantic group of painters which included Keith Vaughan and John Minton. At a time when homosexuality was not only illegal but actively persecuted, they made little attempt to disguise their relationship and they had a constant stream of admirers, both male and female. The circle of friends that grew around them included the painters Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Michael Ayrton, John Minton and the poets George Barker and Dylan Thomas, all attending the regular weekend soirées held by The Roberts at their fashionable Kensington studio.
– excerpt from The Roberts publication, 2010, The Scottish Gallery
Their success in the 1940s prompted the artist and critic, Wyndham Lewis, writing his regular column in The Listener magazine, to state that Colquhoun ‘was generally recognised as one of the best – perhaps the best – of the young artists’ before adding ‘Perhaps I should have said Colquhoun and MacBryde, for they work together, their work is almost identical and they can be regarded almost as one artistic organism.
– Roger Bristow, 2014, from the Golden Years publication
Colquhoun and MacBryde did not avoid personal publicity, despite the former’s natural reticence and the latter’s perceived subjugation of his own gifts in favour of his partner’s. MacBryde’s volubility on Colquhoun’s creative imagination and his selflessness in soliciting approval for it (from whoever might listen), coupled with the novelty of a pair émigré artists working it seemed in domestic harmony, would surely have brought them attention if their paintings had not. They were something perhaps of a curiosity too; two young men who did little to hide the closeness of their private relationship in an age when, outside the rarefied world of the creative arts, overt homosexuality – still illegal – was rarely tolerated.
– Robin Muir, February 2010, Two Bright Guests: Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde in Vogue
Read the full passage in The Roberts here
The Scottish Gallery - Critical Acclaim
The Roberts were included in several Scottish Gallery exhibitions during the war years and beyond. In 2010, Managing Director Christina Jansen curated a small, detailed exhibition of their work to coincide with the publication and catalogue raisonné by Roger Bristow – The Last Bohemians.
The Roberts exhibition at The Scottish Gallery received national critical acclaim in conjunction with Roger Bristow’s monograph which helped bring these forgotten artists back into the public arena. The National Galleries of Scotland went on to mount a major retrospective called The Two Roberts in 2014 and The Scottish Gallery produced Golden Years to coincide with the NGS.
When the Roberts were not in Soho, they were often in Sussex and Essex – but the rapid decline into alcoholism and self-destruction was now entirely evident… However, throughout this period of decline, they continued to work; making art was the essence of who they were. In 1962, Robert Colquhoun suffered a heart attack whilst completing work for his forthcoming exhibition at the Museum Street Gallery and died in the arms of MacBryde. MacBryde thereafter unable to return to painting in any meaningful way. He moved to Dublin in 1964 and died in a traffic accident two years later in 1966.
– Christina Jansen, passage from Golden Years, 2014, The Scottish Gallery
The Two Roberts at the National Gallery of Scotland, 2014
‘The National Galleries of Scotland’s Two Roberts show opened in 2014 when MacBryde would have been 100 years old, and closed in 2015 when Colquhoun would have been 100. Neither of them reached anything like that age, of course, and they were not likely candidates for longevity – their battles with drink, debt, and in Colquhoun’s case depression, are well recorded.’
Read more here: https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/features/two-roberts
The Scottish Gallery - Championing the Legacy
The Gallery produced and curated two further exhibitions on The Roberts; Golden Years in 2014 to coincide with the National Galleries of Scotland exhibition and The Roberts Revisited in 2017. We were able to draw on our own archive and with special permission from other curators and galleries (to add to the primary source material to give further insights) we had photographs and artwork for sale. Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde remain two enigmatic figures in the artworld who made an important contribution to the modern art movement.
