ROBINSON, GEORGE CROSLAND (1858-1930)

"Young Model, Dresden" (1878) 
oil on canvas
61 x 48cm
signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Robinson was an influential & pioneering English-South African Painter. He received his training at the art academy in Dresden, Germany. In 1885 he visited South Africa & 10 years later he settled in Cape Town. He became Head of the Old Cape Town School of Art, which succeeded the Roeland Street School, the first formal art school in South Africa. In 1902 he became a founding member of the South African Society of Artists & served as its chairman from 1904-07, & 1909-15. He was also a well-known personality in the art circles of Cape Town & actively participated in the cultural life, including his vigorous support to efforts to have a South African National Art Museum set up in Cape Town. Robinson gained particular fame with his portraits of prominent South Africans. The works he exhibited at the first exhibition of the South African Society of Artists were painted in an academic-romantic Victorian style. He began to devote himself more to landscape painting in oil as well as in watercolor. Later he also participated in the Royal Exhibition of South African art in Wembley, London (1924–27). After his death, some of his work was also shown at the exhibition of the South African Academy in Johannesburg in 1953, at the Bulawayo Centenary exhibition in 1953, and at the exhibition of "Founders of painting at the Cape" in 1957 in Cape Town. Some of his work is in the possession of the South African National Art Museum in Cape Town, the Africana Museum in Johannesburg and in the Albany Museum in Grahamstown. After a long friendship with the Australian artist, Constance Roth, he married after her husband's death. They had no children. At the time of his death in a tram accident, he was engaged to Helena Lochner. This piece was completed during his studies in Dresden aged just 20!! In fact his art instructor, Friedrich Leon Pohle (1841-1908), completed a portrait of the same model at the same time!