Albert Henry Robinson

Albert H. Robinson, RCA (1881-1956) was a Montreal based painter celebrated for his colourful post-impressionist depictions of Quebec villages and landscapes. His charming and idyllic paintings reveal the influences of his contemporaries J.W. Morrice and Group of Seven member A.Y. Jackson with whom he spent much time.

Born in Hamilton, Robinson began his career as an illustrator for the Times newspaper. After two years there and with time studying at the Hamilton Art School, Robinson had saved enough to travel to Paris. In 1903, he began studies at Academie Julien and then the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He spent two summers with English painter Thomas William Marshall painting in Normandy.

On his return to Canada, Robinson took a position at the Hamilton Art School teaching life class. In 1906, he had his first exhibition with a sale to the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario, J.M. Gibson.

With the support of two patrons in 1907, Robinson relocated to Montreal where he established a studio and met with prominent artists of the day including William Brymner and Maurice Cullen. Robinson exhibited with the RCA from 1909 to 1933 and then with the Canadian Group of Painters of which he was a co-founding member.

Before the war, Robinson met Group of 7 member A.Y. Jackson and the pair began painting together. Over a billiard table one day, they decided to go on a painting trip to Europe. While there, Robinson’s main subjects were ships and the surrounds of St. Malo, a historical French port in Brittany on the Channel coast.

During the war, Robinson worked as a munitions inspector in Longue-Pointe, Quebec. In 1918, he along with J.W. Morrice, F.H. Varley and A.Y. Jackson, helped paint the story of the war for Canadian War Memorials. With the close of the war, Robinson resumed painting rural Quebec taking trips with Clarence Gagnon, Jackson and Edwin Holgate.

Robinson exhibited The Open Stream (1923) at the British Empire Exhibition, Wembley, in 1925. This painting was then shown in Paris where it was bought in 1932 by the French Government. Robinson’s work is in the collections of the National Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Quebec Museum of Art and Canada House.

Due to poor health, Robinson was forced to give up painting a decade before his passing in 1956.