A painter, theatrical designer, writer and a critic, Walford Graham Robertson (1866-1948) moved amongst the cultural and theatrical sets of London. As a young man he was a companion of Oscar Wilde and knew Burne-Jones, and later part of the circle around Noel Coward. He was an acolyte of Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt, and was as happy in Paris as he was in London. He was an early collector of paintings by Whistler, and by the age of twenty, Robertson owned 20 pictures by William Blake, the nucleus of an extensive collection which he left to the Tate Gallery.
This exhibition consists of a unique and personal collection of pictures, books and objects from the family of Robertson’s friend, the Hampshire lawyer Kerrison Preston, who was also Robertsons’s literary executor. Interspersed amongst the Preston things in this exhibition are pictures from the Maas Gallery relating to his world and time.