Robert Colquhoun

(b Kilmarnock, Ayrshire [now Strathclyde], 20 Dec 1914; d London, 20 Sept 1962). Scottish painter and printmaker. He is associated with Robert MacBryde, with whom he worked and whom he met at the Glasgow School of Art in 1932. After a travelling scholarship to France and Italy (1937-9), he and MacBryde were introduced by Peter Watson to the Neo-Romantic circle in London (see NEO-ROMANTICISM). During World War II Colquhoun joined the Civil Defence Corps but continued to paint. After his early works, for example Tomato Plants (c. 1942; priv. col., see exh. cat., p. 55), he concentrated on the theme of the isolated figure, for example Woman with Leaping Cat (1946; London, Tate). These existential images were favourably received and compared with those of contemporaries such as Francis Bacon. Colquhoun's influences included Pablo Picasso, Jankel Adler and Percy Wyndham Lewis, although his art and lifestyle can be understood best in the context of Scottish nationalism. Always in debt, his decline was delayed briefly by a retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1958.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

This article is about the Scottish painter. For the British diplomat, see Robert Gilmour Colquhoun.

Robert Colquhoun
Woman with a Young Goat, 1948
Born	December 20, 1914(1914-12-20) Kilmarnock
Died	September 20, 1962 (aged 47) London
Nationality	Scottish

Robert Colquhoun (20 December 1914 – 20 September 1962) was a Scottish painter, printmaker and theatre set designer.

Colquhoun was born in Kilmarnock and was educated at Kilmarnock Academy. He won a scholarship to study at the Glasgow School of Art, where he met Robert MacBryde with whom he established a lifelong friendship and collaboration, the pair becoming known as "the two Roberts". He joined MacBryde on a travelling scholarship to France and Italy from 1937 to 1939, before serving as an ambulance driver in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Second World War. After being injured, he returned to London in 1941 where he shared studio space with MacBryde. The pair shared a house with John Minton and, from 1943, Jankel Adler.

Colquhoun's early works of agricultural labourers and workmen were strongly influenced by the colours and light of rural Ayrshire. His work developed into a more austere, Expressionist style, heavily influenced by Picasso, and concentrated on the theme of the isolated, agonised figure. From the mid 1940s to the early 1950s he was considered one of the leading artists of his generation. He was also a prolific printmaker, producing a large number of lithographs and monotypes throughout his career.

During and after the Second World War he worked with MacBryde on several set designs. These included sets for Gielgud's Macbeth, King Lear at Stratford and Massine's Scottish ballet Donald of the Burthens, produced by the Sadler's Wells Ballet at Covent Garden in 1951.

Robert Colquhoun died, an alcoholic, in relative obscurity in London in 1962.

External links

• Biography at the Tate Gallery
• Robert Colquhoun on the Gazeteer for Scotland

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