Queer Places:
The Greengate, 46 High St, Kirkcudbright DG6 4JX
Cecile
Walton (29 March 1891 – 23 April 1956), was a Scottish painter, illustrator
and sculptor. She and her husband Eric Robertson were two of the moving
spirits of the Edinburgh chapter of the Symbolist movement in the early 20th
century. Dorothy Johnstone had an intense relationship with Walton
and Robertson. In 1923 Robertson and Walton's relationship eventually broke
down. She and Johnstone appear to have lived together for a while and staged a
joint exhibition in 1924, the same year that Johnstone married fellow artist
David Macbeth Sutherland.
Walton was born in Glasgow, the eldest of four children and daughter of the
artists Helen and Edward Arthur Walton. In 1893, when Walton was two years
old, her family moved to London, where from 1902 her neighbour was
James Abbott McNeill Whistler. In 1904, the Waltons moved again to
Edinburgh, and Walton was taught etching by John Duncan at his home, where she
also met artists and writers, including Dorothy Johnstone and, in 1907, Eric
Robertson.[1]
She also attended the Edinburgh College of Art where, in place of drawing, she
took Percy Portsmouth's sculpture modelling class. While still a student,
Walton was elected to the Society of Scottish Artists in 1908, exhibited at
the Royal Scottish Academy from 1909 and the Royal Glasgow Institute from
1910, and she showed at the Royal Academy in London from 1913.[1]
Walton also studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris for two
winters and spent some time in Florence. In 1911, Walton was commissioned by
the publishers T.C. & E.C. Jack to illustrate their edition of Hans Andersen's
Fairy Tales.[1]
Against her parents' advice, she married her fellow Edinburgh student, Eric
Harald Macbeth Robertson (1887–1941) in 1914. Eric had abandoned architecture
and turned to art. He was described as "one of the most brilliant art students
of his period". They had two sons, the first, Gavril, born in February 1915
and the second, Edward, in December 1919.
EEric, Cecile and the painter Dorothy Johnstone (1892–1980) had formed a
close painting and physical liaison. In 1913, the three artists exhibited
together at Edinburgh's New Gallery, and after the war they regrouped as the
Edinburgh Group, now with Mary Newbery.[1]
However, Eric's excessive drinking led in 1923 to the collapse of the group
and Cecile's moving in with Johnstone. In 1924, Walton had a joint exhibition
with Johnstone in Edinburgh. However, her painting career foundered with their
marriage, which ended in divorce in 1927. Walton 's painting faltered, but she
did execute murals for the Children's Village in Humbie, Midlothian in the mid
1920s, and for Small's department store on Princes Street, Edinburgh, and she
was also the art editor of Edinburgh University's Atlanta's Garland (1926) where she wrote on women's art in
Scotland.[1]
She also turned to the theatre and worked for four seasons as a decor artist
for Tyrone Guthrie at the Cambridge Festival Theatre.[1]
In 1936, Walton returned to Edinburgh and began working for BBC radio where
she was in charge of the Scottish Children's Hour radio programming.[1]
Eric's career also collapsed after their separation, and he eventually
succumbed to alcohol.[2]
Walton remarried in 1936 to producer Gordon Gildard, with whom she moved to
Glasgow, however this was another short-lived marriage and she divorced in
1945.[1]
She spent the rest of her life in Kirkcudbright.[1]
She died in Edinburgh on 23 April 1956.[3]
Walton is best known for her ironic self-portrait Romance,, in which
she depicts herself as a latter-day Olympia, critically inspecting her newborn
son Edward, while both are watched by his sibling Gavril.[4][5][6]
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecile_Walton