Lot 51: FREDERICK CAYLEY ROBINSON, ARA RWS

FREDERICK CAYLEY ROBINSON, ARA RWS (BRITISH,1862-1927) TWO GIRLS IN A ROOM BY LAMPLIGHT, A NEW MOON IN THE SKY OUTSIDE signed with initials and dated '01 l.r; tempera on board 20.5cm x 16cm; 8in x 6 1/4in Frederick Cayley Robinson was born in Brentford , a village on the Thames to the west of London, and was educated partly in France. He trained at St. John's Wood Academy and The Royal Academy Schools in London. After living on a yacht for two years sailing around the English coast, he studied from 1890 to 1892 at the Academie Julian in Paris. In 1898 he travelled to Florence and he also stayed in Newlyn and elsewhere before settling in Holland Park's artistic community in London. He exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists from 1888 and at the Royal Academy from 1895. The main influences on his style were Burne Jones, Puvis de Chavannes and, from 1898, Fra Angelico and the Florentine tempera painters. From 1914 he also taught composition and figurative and decorative art at the Glasgow School of Art. This is a symbolist painting by an artist who drew on a number of cultural traditions. The result was that Cayley Robinson painted his own personal visions. These were not necessarily on a grand scale, in terms of either size or subject matter (although they could be as in the murals of the Four Acts of Mercy which he painted for the Middlesex Hospital). He often painted interiors and was fascinated by the effects of artificial light which he used to convey the atmosphere of a dream world, full of mystery and private yearning, in many of his pictures. The present painting from 1901 shows two young women in a room after dusk.