My brother, Alastair Robertson, who has died aged 75, combined a passion for wildlife with a compulsion to draw from an early age. Home was a suburban version of My Friends and Other Animals, with green lizards in a vivarium, a succession of ferrets stinking out a garden shed and a Harris Hawk called Doris in the downstairs loo. His room was filled with cartoons, pen-and-ink sketches and scraperboards mainly depicting birds and animals, although the occasional human fell prey to his sense of humour.
His connections with Wales began with childhood holidays in Pembrokeshire from the age of 4. Every year we stayed in a cottage called Drws Gobaith, built from the tradition of ty unnos, an ‘overnight house’, in the middle of Dowrog Common. At a time when Peregrine Falcons had been decimated by organochlorine pesticides, he managed to locate eyries which were still occupied along the cliffs near St David’s Head. Although watching and sketching Peregrines was the main draw west for over two decades, he also sought out other scarce species, such as High Brown Fritillary, which was then still hanging on in Cwm Gwaun.
His acutely observed watercolour illustrations of wildlife against delicate backgrounds of washes were widely exhibited in the 1970s and 1980s. His knowledge was intimate, based on acute observation and a high degree of empathy, so that his birds are always alive, never stiff, often exhibiting an aspect of behaviour which he had observed.
Early in his career he provided a cover illustration of wrens for RSPB’s Birds magazine, after which he began illustrating a variety of books and magazines. He provided meticulously crafted illustrations of rare birds, based on studying skins in the Natural History Museum’s ornithological department at Tring, for Save the Birds, a ground-breaking publication of the world’s threatened birds by IUCN and ICBP (now Birdlife International).
He turned his hand to all manner of wildlife, bats being a favourite: his line drawings add humour to The Complete Bat (1990). Impressively, when he lost the use of his right hand in an accident, he transferred his skills to his left.
His association with Natur Cymru began with the first edition in 2001. He provided a stock of small vignettes to punctuate texts as well as drawings to accompany specific articles. He provided artwork for three covers, most notably for the tenth anniversary edition in 2011. His choice of ten terns, one for each year of publication, was typical of the pleasure he took in adding a layer of meaning to his paintings; this graphic illustration is also a nod to the influence of Clifford and Rosemary Ellis under whom he studied at Bath Academy of Art and whose artwork set the standard with the dust-wrapper for E B Ford’s Butterflies (1945), the first volume in the New Naturalist series.
From the early 1980s he lived in a National Trust property surrounded by chalk downland. There he met Anna Gedroyc, an extrovert and bubbly perfect fit and they married in 1985; Anna died in 2021. He cut an eccentric figure, accompanied by one of his Scottish Deerhounds, and was happiest immersed in nature, sat under a tree or above a Welsh cliff sketching birds and noticing everything. These observations and the excitement which accompanied them were faithfully rendered into his paintings, which are his legacy
Alastair always followed his own star. After he lost his larynx to cancer, he would type what he wanted to say on a notepad: his messages never failed to surprise me. Avoiding being boring or predictable was something that came naturally. At the end, conscious that he was dying, he typed out a farewell to the effect that the process was enthralling to him, and ended with ‘sorry to be selfish’.
James Robertson
Thank you for this wonderful obituary. I never met Alastair Robertson but greatly admire his work. Anyone “… far from the centre of human life …”, and happiest looking at birdlife must be warmly remembered.
I’ll certainly support the launch of the NIU.
My wife Marcie and I were good friends of Alastair and Anna in the 80’s, spending much time in the Sow & Pigs, Toddington, and the Sharpenhoe pub conveniently adjacent to their home. He was usually accompanied by Struie, his deerhound. We are fortunate to have been given some of his paintings, including a mildly suggestive depiction of Sharpenhoe Clappers, the wooded hill behind his cottage.