In addition he was a chronic asthmatic whose creative character was formed not on the playing fields of Battersea or

In addition, he was a chronic asthmatic whose creative character was formed not on the playing fields of Battersea or even in the art galleries of the capital but, as Bryan would explain with a twinkle in his eye, in bed, where he read voraciously the great works of European literature and every art book he could get his hands on.His immense knowledge and quizzical intellect stemmed from these early experiences, as did his belief that art at its best was both an inspiration and a refuge. “What I look for in art of any period,” he wrote later, “is a transcendent ability to soar above life and not be subjugated by it.” It drew him instinctively towards abstraction and led to a deep, if often amusing, suspicion of expressionism. “Life seems quite expressionist enough,” he would say, “without having to endure a painting of a grimacing or shrieking face on the wall.”Like that of his contemporary David Sylvester, the only other British curator and critic who could remotely be called his equal, Bryan Robertson’s formal education ended after he left school. He worked as a sub-editor and would-be writer on Studio magazine before spending a year in Paris. There, in 1947, he met modern masters such as Brancusi, Braque and Giacometti before returning to London and working at the Lefevre Gallery.This commercial experience may have helped his future career but he remained hopeless with money all his life. Rather, it seems more likely that the opportunity of working with the likes of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson as well as the quirkier younger figures of John Minton, Robert Colquhoun and Keith Vaughan was what inspired him to devote himself to staging exhibitions and in 1949 his career began in earnest when he was appointed Director of the Heffer Gallery in Cambridge.Over the next three years, with very limited resources, the breadth and idiosyncrasies of Robertson’s curatorial interests became apparent. His shows ranged from the paintings of Cecil Collins and Merlyn Evans to the sculptures of Henry Moore and the pots of Bernard Leach and Lucie Rie, then a virtual unknown.

In addition, he organised an exhibition of modern French painting at the Fitzwilliam including work by Bonnard, Braque and Picasso. In the parochial post-war English art scene, this was a radical programme. After all, the horse-painting President of the Royal Academy Alfred Munnings declared around this time that if he met Picasso and Matisse in the street he would kick their arses, or words to that effect. Thankfully, however, Robertson was about to kick the complacent arts establishment up its own backside.Although it was chronically under-funded and classified as a “provincial institution” because it was just outside the square mile of the City of London, the Whitechapel Art Gallery was still one of only a handful of places which showed modern and contemporary art in London and, by extension, in Britain. Consequently, the directorship was highly sought after and the 27-year-old Robertson went head to head with Lawrence Alloway, David Sylvester, Quentin Bell and Lawrence Gowing for the job. He won and for the next 17 years developed a succession of exhibitions whose range, vitality, originality, vision and importance are such that it seems almost inconceivable that any other curator could have or will ever come close to rivalling it.His first major show was devoted to Turner, astonishingly the first substantial exhibition of the painter’s work in a public gallery since his death in 1851. Almost immediately Robertson followed up with further exhibitions devoted to neglected figures from historic British art, notably James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, John Martin and George Stubbs.

Within two years, in 1954, he rejuvenated the career of a neglected contemporary British artist, Barbara Hepworth.Next he drew on his Parisian experience and turned his attention to the masters of modern European art, to Mondrian, Malevich, Poliakov, de Sta?and Henry Moore, whose Whitechapel show in 1960 was his first significant one in Britain outside the commercial sector And then came the Americans. Certainly the curators of the future saw many of Robertson’s shows, not least the young Nick Serota, who still hails Robertson as a mentor and who himself enhanced his career as a director of the Whitechapel.But most significant of all were the young artists whose eyes were opened in the white-walled spaces of Robertson’s gallery. In turn, Robertson was then able to exhibit their work in a series of New Generation exhibitions which began in 1964. David Hockney, Patrick Caulfield, Bridget Riley, Allen Jones, Phillip King, William Tucker, Tim Scott and John Hoyland were among the stars of the shows whose careers flourished immediately after. Along with Anthony Caro, who had a highly acclaimed d?t retrospective at the Whitechapel in 1963, these artists put Britain on the international map, inspired as they were in no small measure by Robertson.When he left London to take up in 1970 the directorship of the newly formed Museum of the State University of New York, Bridget Riley wrote: The British contemporary art scene after the last war was marked by an infectious apathy and vicious insularity.

What Bryan Robertson did at the Whitechapel was simply this: he made people aware of the developments outside these islands, he provided a focus for British artists and encouraged them to work in an international context.Most accounts of Robertson’s career and achievements hint at a certain disgruntlement and a falling away after his return from New York in 1975. It is certainly true to say that his creative power and vision might well have been harnessed more fully by a major British gallery and that after his failure to get the Tate job twice in the Sixties he became the greatest director that institution never had. But Robertson was, in many ways, suited to the life of a freelance writer, broadcaster and curator. His was ultimately a free spirit that was best liberated from the shackles of museum politics. He was offered and very nearly accepted the directorship of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne but, in spite of his commitment to Australian art, he loved London too much.Throughout the Eighties he continued to organise exhibitions, not least a record attendance-breaking Raoul Dufy show at the Hayward Gallery.