FREDERICK CAYLEY ROBINSON

 

Post 225 -by Gautam Shah

SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture

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Frederic Cayley Robinson (1862-1927) was one of the most prolific and original British artists, remained an obscure figure. He was a painter, illustrator and decorator. He attended the Royal Academy of Arts in London and Académie Julian in Paris.

Cayley Robinson remained busy traveling abroad. He stayed in Florence and Paris. Here he took up the practice of painting in tempera, plaster, and with charcoal pencils. He experimented with egg tempera to achieve a degree of surface flatness. Robinson worked with oil, pastel and watercolours, which helped him to become, a luxury, stage and fashion designer. In 1915 he executed giant fresco paintings at the Middle-sex hospital.

Cayley Robinson scenes are full of girls and women, silently involved with their own concerns. They are all set against the architectural elements (windows), or surfaces. The people and scenic lines are curvaceously elongated. These combined with flat colours without the shades gradations or shadows, create a simple, yet allusive space. He uses subdued intonation, and the source of illumination remains indistinct. He exploits the form and colours to impress a holistic mood for the scene.

Cecil French recalls: 'The potency of spell, the visionary strangeness, the almost desperate sincerity, of the new, mysterious, isolated artist brought to mind the first strenuous beginnings of the English Pre-Raphaelite group'.

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