* ADAM ROBSON SSA (SCOTTISH 1928 - 2007),
LOCH MEALLBRODDEN, CRIEFF
oil on canvas, signed, further signed, titled and dated August 1978 verso
image size 61cm x 91cm, overall size 73cm x 104cm
Framed.
Note: Adam Robson won 22 caps for the Scotland rugby team between 1954 and 1960, and was President of the Scottish Rugby Union in 1984 when the national team won the Grand Slam. He was also a prolific and diverse artist, who sold more than 900 works, and the author of three books. Robson played for the Barbarians 15 times, a club whose ethos of sportsmanship on and off the pitch chimed perfectly with his view of rugby as a gentleman's game. He went to Canada on the Baa-Baa's first overseas tour in 1957 when the team, which included a young Tony O'Reilly, won all six games. In 1985, he joined the Barbarians Committee, which he served for 20 years. Robson was much more than a rugby man, though. He was born in Hawick in 1928, to a father from the Borders and a mother from Shetland, who would instil in her son a love of the place. He attended Hawick High School, where he was inspired by his art teacher, James A Finlayson. After National Service in the UK, Egypt, Palestine and Tripolitania from 1946-48, he enrolled at Edinburgh College of Art, where he gained a scholarship and a distinction in life drawing. After leaving art school in 1952, he became an art teacher at Kirkcaldy High School in 1953 and began to exhibit his paintings more widely. He exhibited regularly with the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Scottish Watercolourists, and became a professional member of the Society of Scottish Artists in 1957. He moved to Dollar Academy in 1956, where he was a boarding housemaster between 1963-69 and Head of Art from 1968 until he retired in 1988. All the while he was painting and working in a range of mediums, particularly oils and watercolours. He had an affinity with the Scottish landscape, especially the bleak and rugged coasts of Shetland and the gentle hills of the Borders.