Colquhoun, Robert

About the artist

Name

Colquhoun, Robert

Biography

Robert Colquhoun was born on 20 December 1914 at Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, the eldest child of Robert Colquhoun, an engineering fitter, and his wife, Janet Candlish. He was educated at Loanhead primary school and then transferred to Kilmarnock Academy in 1926 where his artistic ability was soon observed by James Lyle, his determined and dedicated art teacher. Colquhoun's father, responding to the severe economic pressures of the time, arranged for Robert to leave school at the age of fourteen to begin an engineering apprenticeship.

On learning of the boy's departure, Lyle was concerned enough to persuade two wealthy benefactors to fund his return to school and prepare, with eventual success, for a scholarship to the Glasgow School of Art, which he entered possibly in 1932 but most probably in 1933. Her, with whom he formed a tender and ultimately inseparable relationship.

This information was taken from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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