Sir Robin Philipson (1916-92) ranks as a key painter of the Edinburgh School. He headed the Drawing and Painting School at Edinburgh College of Art for over twenty years and served as Secretary, then as President, of the Royal Scottish Academy. One early critic called him a painter of ‘great courage and fluency’ and another wrote later of his ‘sensuous pigment and coruscations of colour’. This talk by Elizabeth Cumming traces the range of his art and his commitment to craftsmanship and the value of tradition to modernity.
Art historian Elizabeth Cumming is an Honorary Professor at Edinburgh University. Her book on Robin Philipson was published by Sansom in 2018.
Serenity and Strife: The Art of Robin Philipson