50 / 272
48
38 HENRY HAREWOOD ROBINSON (FL.1884-1904)Hide and Seek
Oil on panel, 47.5 x 37.5cm (18 x 14¼’’)
Signed
Exhibited: Royal Hibernian Academy 1887, Catalogue No.193 (thought to be the same work).
Henry Harewood Robinson, along with his wife, Irish painter Maria Webb, was one of the central figures in the early years of the St Ives School,
Cornwall. He was a painter of landscape, figure and harbour subjects in Brittany and Cornwall, which he exhibited at the RHA and the Royal
Academy. He became the first secretary of the St Ives Art Club, founded in 1890, serving for nine years and later becoming its president. He
was a popular and generous man, also knowledgeable about music and training as a barrister. (See Marian Whybrow, ‘St Ives 1883-1993:
Portrait of an Art Colony’, Antique Collectors Club, Suffok 1994). Robinson visited Concarneau in 1884 and may have met Maria Webb from Ire-
land, also painting in Brittany at this period. (J. Campbell, ‘Peintres Irlandais en Bretagne’, Pont-Aven 1999). Upon moving to St Ives, the couple
married in 1886 or 1887. They lived in a tower shaped house, with a studio at the top.
He wrote for the magazine ‘West Country Arts Review’ in 1896. He also ‘gave many concerts at St Ives for charitable purposes, arranging songs
and conducting the orchestra.’ (Whybrow, p.45). Robinson died at his house, Bellyars Croft, in 1904. Robinson’s most important works are of
Breton and Cornish subjects. He was a regular exhibitor at the RHA Dublin, 1887-1902, at The Royal Academy, 1884-1896, and at other venues
in Britain. His major Breton subject, ‘
Market Girls, Brittany’
, was shown in the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition in 1885, the RA in 1886 and the RHA
in 1887.
The present picture may be that entitled ‘
Hide and Seek
’ which was also exhibited in Dublin in 1887. A girl with white cap, clogs and apron is
shown peeping around the corner of a woodland chapel or cloisters, into which sun streams. Robinson delicately captures the fall of warm pink
sunlight upon the stonework and the alluring glimpse of verdant trees through the archway. The picture is framed by a hand-made wooden
frame, decorated with hob-nails, contributing to the individual vernacular effect.
Dr. Julian Campbell
€ 700 - 1,000