Artworks by Albrecht Dürer, Alison Watt, Joan Eardley and more enter Gracefield Arts Centre’s collection following major bequest

By Lena Kammerer, 16.02.2026

Alison Watt RSA (b. 1965), The Last Supper (c. unknown). © the artist.

This past summer, the Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries acquired seventy-seven exceptional artworks from the private collection of art lover and collector Eric Robinson (1930-2024), most of which had for decades adorned his stunning Regency apartment in Edinburgh’s New Town. Born in Stoke-on-Trent, Robinson lived in Edinburgh since the mid-1980s, a place he already knew well from his student days at The University of Edinburgh where he had studied history of art.

After completing his postgraduate studies at Edinburgh in 1962, he became the head of Art and Design History at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, where he took an active role in local politics and joined the Liberal Party. Returning to Edinburgh in 1986, he continued to shape cultural policy as Director of SALVO, the Scottish Arts Lobby, until 1997, administrator of Community Arts Scotland from 1989 to 1998, and later co-ordinator of Voluntary Arts Scotland. From 1992, he also lectured in Design History and Contemporary Studies at Dundee University.

His elegantly furnished home in the Scottish capital city gradually became a place to display his vast art collection, comprising works of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first-century Scottish artists as well as European graphic work and textiles ranging from 1500 to the present day, assembled with a limited budget but a distinct sense for the extraordinary and beautiful.

During an initial search for rural galleries that might one day receive his collection, Robinson first came into contact with Gracefield in 2017. This encounter led, in 2018, to a display at the gallery of around thirty of Robinson’s favourite collected works, shown alongside an earlier bequest from the London-based collector Dickie Hewlett. After Robinson’s passing in 2024, Gracefield was invited to bid to acquire some of the collection, and, in June 2025, received a formal gift of the requested works, some of which had previously been on temporary loan to the gallery in 2018.

Therewith, Gracefield became a recipient of the largest single bequest, facilitated by the Art Fund UK, of Robinson’s collection in accordance with the art lover’s expressed wish to see his collected artworks given to public collections upon his death. The bequest encompasses works by many of the greats of Scottish art, among them Joan Eardley, Elizabeth Blackadder and Robert Colquhoun, as well as figures of international renown such as David Hockney, Édouard Vuillard and Georges Braque.

Among the earliest works bequeathed to Gracefield is a late-fifteenth-century engraving by one of Northern Europe’s most eminent Renaissance artists, Albrecht Dürer. ‘The Angel with the Key of the Bottomless Pit’ (c. 1498) offers an intriguing example of Dürer’s enduring engagement with religious themes. Alison Watt’s ‘Last Supper’ (1988), while invoking similar religious overtones in its title, presents a strikingly intimate portrait of a young man, as painted by one of the key figures of Scottish contemporary art today.

Paula Rego’s evocative etching ‘Young Predators’ (1987), an aquatint portraying two oversized girls, one astride a large dog, embodies the Portuguese-British visual artist’s myth-infused imagination with Rego herself describing the figure on the dog as “the Goddess Diana out on the pull”. And in Graham Sutherland’s lithograph ‘Pelican’ (1953), a bird takes centre stage, rendered with a strikingly vivid yet unsettling intensity that underscores the artist’s fascination with the natural world.

From Dürer’s Renaissance engraving to Sutherland’s expressive modern lithograph and beyond, the numerous works now entrusted to Gracefield stand as a lasting testament to Robinson’s lifelong dedication to art and collecting. As Gracefield’s Arts Officer, Dawn Henderby, notes: ‘It is an honour to look after these works and share Eric’s passion for art collecting and the joy it can bring over a lifetime.’

The Eric Robinson Bequest is exhibited at Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries, until 9^th May 2026.