Giles Henry Robertson

(1913 -1987)
Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art
in the University of Edinburgh

The son of D. S. Robertson, Regius Professsor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, Giles Robertson read Classics at Oxford and saw active service during World War II. He joined the staff of the University of Edinburgh as a lecturer in Fine Art in 1946, and was involved with Professor David Talbot Rice (who would eventually be his predecessor) in establishing the new Honours degree in Fine Art. As Talbot's Rice's successor in the Chair from 1972 to 1981 he supervised the inauguration of the University's Talbot Rice Arts Centre, now one of the leading art galleries in Scotland. He was also a Trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland, a governor of the Edinburgh College of Art and, in the late 1950s, the art critic of "The Scotsman".

Giles Robertson's collection of some 1,200 items includes significant numbers of modern exhibition catalogues and important works on 18th-century art. It was gifted to the Library in June 1998 by his family in his memory. The books have been added to the Library's general collections and listed in the online catalogue.

(Photograph by kind permission of the Department of Fine Art, University of Edinburgh)