W. Graham Robertson (1866–1948)

Walford Graham Robertson (1866-1948) was a wealthy English painter, writer, and collector of William Blake watercolors.
Robertson was well known in art and theatrical circles of the 1880s and 1890s as a rising artist. A bachelor, he lived with his mother till her death in 1907, and thenceforth as a country gentleman. He developed numerous friendships with actors, artists, and collectors. Among his correspondents were artists such as Burne-Jones and Whistler, playwrights such as Pinero, James Barrie and Terence Rattigan, actors and actresses such as Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt in the old days, the Lunts and Laurence Oliviers later on, and collectors such as Mrs. (White) Emerson of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although he painted and wrote little after 1914, he maintained extensive correspondence with numerous literary or stage personalities during his long retirement, and many of them made the journey to Sandhills, his Surrey home. As a collector he was best known for the number and quality of his Blake watercolors, many of which he gave to the Tate Gallery on the outbreak of World War II in 1939; the rest were widely dispersed to public and private collections after his death in 1948. He had no relatives or heirs; to his long-time friend and executor, Kerrison Preston, fell the task of distributing his books, pictures and estate among various charitable causes. Among these was set up the William Blake Trust, founded with Graham Robertson money, to publish the now well-known Trianon Press facsimiles of Blake's illuminated books.