Charles+Robinson+(1870-1937)

Charles Robinson (1870-1937) was raised in North London. It is hardly surprising that he and his equally gifted brothers, Thomas and Heath, should have chosen artistic professions. Charles's grandfather had bound books at Newcastle-on-Tyne for the skilled and innovative wood-engraver Thomas Bewick, whose craft he made his own on coming to London; his father and uncle both drew for leading periodicals during the heyday of the wood-block illustration and developed literary and artistic associations in which the three boys took keen interest. Trained at the schools of the Royal Academy, Charles also served a seven-year apprenticeship in lithography. His first drawing was sold to Mr Joseph Darton, a prominent publisher of children's books. Robinson's illustrations for Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses (1896) established his reputation as a 'decorator par excellence. All three brothers collaborated on an elaborate and fanciful edition of Fairy Tales from Hans Andersen (1899). Charles preferred the black, rhythmically sinuous line of the Art Nouveau mode but also effectively used the opulent hues of Eastern art. For the amusement of his friends he drew men cards and programmes in a Beardsleyesque manner, under the facetious pseudonym of `Awfly Weirdley'.

'The Russian Princess'
The Happy Prince and Other Stories DUCKWORTH & CO 1913