The Two Roberts

Today’s the day ................... to be pleasantly surprised

I went to an exhibition in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art today – not because I thought I would enjoy it particularly – but more because I thought I should at least give it a go.

It featured the paintings of two Scottish artist that, to be honest, I’d never heard of – Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde. They met in 1933 when they were both students at the Glasgow School of Art. Moving to London in the early 1940s, they rocketed to fame becoming two of the most celebrated artists of the postwar period alongside their friends Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. And yet in the 50s their work dropped out of fashion and in 1962 Colquhoun died penniless aged just 47. Four years later MacBryde also died.

Their paintings were very different from the sort of art that I usually enjoy and I found some of them quite disturbing – but I’m glad that I did go and see them. It’s a brilliantly put-together exhibition. You are led gently by the hand and given just the right amount of information to help you try to understand what prompted the two Roberts to paint the way they did ........................