Martin Robertson
Born	Charles Martin Robertson (1911-09-11)11 September 1911 Pangbourne, United Kingdom
Died	26 December 2004(2004-12-26) (aged 93) Cambridge, United Kingdom
Resting place	Cambridge City Cemetery
Alma mater	Trinity College, Cambridge
Children	6, includingThomas Dolby andStephen Robertson
Parents	Donald Struan Robertson (father) Petica Coursolles Robertson (mother)
Relatives	Agnes Arber (aunt) Margaret Hills (aunt) Giles Henry Robertson (brother)
Academic background
Education	The Leys School, Cambridge
Academic work
Discipline	Classics
Sub-discipline	Ancient Greek art
Institutions	British Museum University College London University of Oxford
Notable students	Lisa French
Notable works	A History of Greek Art (1975)
Military service
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Branch	British Army
Years of service	1940–1946
Unit	Royal Signals Intelligence Corps

Charles Martin Robertson (11 September 1911 – 26 December 2004), known asMartin Robertson, was a Britishclassical scholar and poet. He specialised in the art and archaeology ofAncient Greece, and was best known for his 1975 publication,A History of Greek Art.

Born inPangbourne, Robertson was the son of a classicist and the brother of a noted art historian. He was educated atThe Leys School andTrinity College, Cambridge, and took part in archaeological excavations from 1930. After a period at theBritish School at Athens (BSA), he joined theBritish Museum in 1936, where he became an apprentice of the art historianBernard Ashmole. During theSecond World War, Robertson served briefly in theRoyal Signals before being transferred to intelligence work, in which capacity he was a subordinate of the archaeologistAlan Wace and a colleague of the Soviet agentKim Philby, who had been his contemporary at Cambridge.

Robertson succeeded Ashmole asYates Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology atUniversity College London in 1948. He returned to the BSA in 1957–1958, and became chair of its governing council in 1959. In 1961, once again following Ashmole, he was appointedLincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at theUniversity of Oxford, where he remained until his retirement in 1978. Alongside his archaeological work, Robertson wrote and published poetry, releasing four collections of his works in the 1970s.

Robertson's archaeological publications included material fromIthaca andPerachora in Greece and from the site ofAl-Mina in Syria. His work on Greek art extended that ofJohn Beazley, who had pioneered the study ofAttic vase-painting in the first half of the twentieth century. HisHistory of Greek Art remained a standard reference for many decades, and in 1983 the museum curatorIan Jenkins wrote that "there can be few students of Greek art who would not readily admit their debt to him".^[1]: 208

Charles Martin Robertson was born inPangbourne, Berkshire, on 11 September 1911. He was the eldest child ofDonald Struan Robertson and Petica Coursolles,née Jones. His mother maintained a literarysalon;^[2]: 321 his father was a classicist, who had been appointed as an assistant lecturer at theUniversity of Cambridge in the year of Robertson's birth and became the university'sRegius Professor of Greek in 1930.^{[3]: 557 [2]: 321} Robertson was known as "Martin" throughout his life.^[4]

Robertson attendedThe Leys School andTrinity College, Cambridge, where he read classics.^[4] His university contemporaries included the art historianDale Trendall and the politicianEnoch Powell,^[2]: 322 as well asKim Philby, later a spy for the Soviet Union within the BritishSecret Intelligence Service, who became Robertson's friend.^{[2]: 324 [5]} Robertson visited theBritish School at Athens (BSA) and attended his first excavations in 1930, in the summer before hismatriculation at Trinity,^[2]: 321 atPerachora in theCorinthia, under the directorship of the archaeologistHumfry Payne, the BSA's director. He graduated from Trinity in 1934 with aFirst in part two oftripos, having achieved relatively poor results in his first year and aSecond in his second.^[2]: 322 Later, in 1934–1936, Robertson moved to Athens as a student of the BSA, still under Payne's directorship.^[3]: 557 His colleagues at the BSA includedRomilly Jenkins,Nicholas Hammond,Robert Cook,Peter Megaw andThomas Dunbabin.^[6] While in Athens, he worked onIron Age material from the excavation ofIthaca.^[2]: 322He published a short article inThe Journal of Hellenic Studies in 1935, on askyphos painted by the fifth-century BCEPan Painter: his father had introduced him to the vase, and both Robertsons had independently identified it as the painter's handiwork.^{[2]: 323 [7]: 67}

Robertson unsuccessfully applied to be made afellow of Trinity in 1936: he was required to submit written work in support of his application, and did so on the material from Ithaca, but his examiner mistakenly sent Robertson's file to the Oxford art historianJohn Beazley, who was supporting Dale Trendall's competing application. Robertson instead took a post in September 1936 as Assistant Keeper in the Greek and Roman department of theBritish Museum, cataloguing the pottery from the excavations atAl-Mina in Syria led byLeonard Woolley in 1936–1937.^[2]: 323 In 1937–1938, staff in the department carried out an aggressive cleaning of theElgin Marbles, using copper chisels and highly abrasivesilicon carbide, at the request of the entrepreneurJoseph Duveen; Duveen wanted the sculptures, originally painted, to look whiter for their display in a new gallery which he was funding.^[8] Robertson was not involved in the cleaning, and so kept his job (leaving him as the only remaining junior Assistant Keeper); however, he was demoted in seniority. As a consequence of the dismissals,Denys Haynes was recruited as an Assistant Keeper, and the art historianBernard Ashmole, theYates Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology atUniversity College London, was brought in on a part-time basis to run the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Haynes and Robertson became lifelong friends, and Robertson later wrote of the "precious apprenticeship" he gained from working with Ashmole.^[2]: 323

Robertson attended a classical conference in Berlin in August 1939, on behalf of the British Museum; he was recalled shortly before the outbreak of theSecond World War. From 23 August, he took part in the removal of material from the museum toLondon Underground stations andcountry houses, so as to protect the artefacts from bombing.^[2]: 323 In 1940, he enlisted in theBritish Army as a member of theRoyal Signals, but was soon transferred to theIntelligence Corps and trained to work incryptanalysis atBletchley Park. Sparkes later wrote that his military service was largely unsuccessful and characterised by "mind-numbing boredom".^{[2]: 323–324} In late 1942, shortly after the end of theSecond Battle of El Alamein in November, he was moved to theSecret Intelligence Service and sent to Cairo to work withAlan Wace, a fellow archaeologist and former director of the BSA, who had requested Robertson's assistance in carrying out intelligence work in the British embassy there. Due to an administrative mistake, Robertson was transferred toNaples rather than to Athens in 1943–1944, and later served inSalonica in Greece alongside Philby.^[2]: 324

Robertson left military service in 1946,^[2]: 325 and returned to the British Museum, where he assisted in returning the evacuated collections to the galleries.^[4] He resigned in 1948 to succeed Ashmole as Yates Professor at UCL.^[2]: 322 During his tenure in London, he began to grow a beard, but was ordered to stop by his superiors: his obituaristBrian Sparkes wrote that they were concerned that he was displaying "arty" inclinations considered unbecoming of a professor.^[6] He was a visiting fellow of the BSA for the 1957–1958 academic year.^[2]: 322 He published his first book,Greek Painting, in 1959. It used the surviving Greek paintings on vases and other artistic works to reconstruct now-lostfrescoes described by ancient authors.^[6] Between 1959 and 1968, he was chair of the governing council of the BSA.^[2]: 322

In 1961, Robertson again succeeded Ashmole, this time asLincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at theUniversity of Oxford, in which role he served until his retirement in 1978.^[4] He edited the second volume of the BSA's excavations at Perachora in 1962, following the deaths of Payne (who had conducted the excavations) and of the editors initially appointed to publish the work.^[6] In 1968–1969, he was a visiting scholar at theInstitute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey; he also held a visiting appointment at theJ. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 1980.^[4] In 1992, he publishedThe Art of Vase-Painting in Classical Athens, continuing and concluding his scholarly interest in Athenian painting.^[6]

From 1994,^[2]: 330 Robertson suffered fromGuillain–Barré syndrome andmyasthenia gravis. He died ofcardiovascular disease andbronchopneumonia at home in Cambridge on 26 December 2004, and was buried inCambridge City Cemetery.^[4]

As a scholar, Robertson is best remembered for his work on Greek art, in particular vase painting. He improved the techniques developed by Beazley to attribute unsigned works to specific vase-painters.^[4] When Beazley died in 1970, Robertson and another of Beazley's students,Dietrich von Bothmer, updated and enlarged Beazley's earlier lists of painters,Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters; they published their edition in 1971.^[2]: 328 Among Robertson's students at UCL was the Mycenaean archaeologistLisa French, who completed her doctorate in 1961.^[9]: 461John Boardman, who wrote Robertson's entry in theOxford Dictionary of National Biography, described him as a "careful, not enthusiastic lecturer, with a minor voice impediment", and as a diligent supervisor of graduate students, albeit one sometimes excessively slow to criticise their work.^[4]

Robertson'sHistory of Greek Art, which first appeared in 1975, was still considered authoritative in the twenty-first century.^[4] Also in 1975, he publishedThe Parthenon Frieze in collaboration with the photographerAlison Frantz. In 1982, he was the dedicatee of aFestschrift,The Eye of Greece, edited by Donna Kurtz andBrian Sparkes.^[4] Robertson's work on Athenian red-figure vase-painting culminated inThe Art of Vase-Painting in Classical Athens, published in 1992 while he was in his eighties. The museum curatorIan Jenkins wrote in 1983 that "there can be few students of Greek art who would not readily admit their debt to him".^[1]: 208

As a poet Robertson published various collections, includingCrooked Connections (1970),For Rachel (1972),A Hot Bath at Bedtime (1975), andThe Sleeping Beauty's Prince (1977). Boardman described his poetry as "personal, often witty and sensitive, [and] much admired by many". He also published translations of Greek poetry,^[4] including one of a fragment of an erotic work byArchilochus discovered in 1974.^[10]

Robertson's mother was killed in 1941 while serving as anair-raid warden in Cambridge.^[2]: 324 His paternal aunt,Agnes Arber, was a botanist: she was the third woman and the first female life scientist to be granted membership of theRoyal Society.^[11] Another paternal aunt wasMargaret Hills, asuffragist organiser and the first woman to sit onStroud Urban District Council.^[12] His brother,Giles Henry Robertson, was a professor of art history at theUniversity of Edinburgh.^[3]: 557

Robertson married Theodosia (known as Cecil),née Spring Rice, on 4 September 1942:^[4] the couple had six children, including the musicianThomas Dolby^[4] and the computer scientistStephen Robertson.^[13] Their first child, Lucy, was born while Martin was posted to Cairo, and raised by Cecil inIken inSuffolk.^[2]: 324 While in Suffolk, the Robertsons became friends with the composerBenjamin Britten and his partner, the singerPeter Pears.^[4] Cecil Robertson died in an accident in 1984.^{[4][2]: 325} Martin remarried in 1988, to Louise Berge (née Holstein), who had been his graduate student at Oxford in the late 1960s.^{[4][6][2]: 330}

• Robertson, Charles Martin (1935). "A Skyphos by the Pan Painter".The Journal of Hellenic Studies.55:67–70.doi:10.2307/626660.ISSN 0075-4269.JSTOR 626660.
• — (1949).Why Study Greek Art? An Inaugural Lecture Delivered at University College, London. London: H. K. Lewis & Co. Ltd.OCLC 22090898.
• — (1950). "Origins of the Berlin Painter".The Journal of Hellenic Studies.70:23–34.doi:10.2307/629289.ISSN 0075-4269.JSTOR 629289.
• — (1958). "The Gorgos Cup".American Journal of Archaeology.70 (1):55–66.doi:10.2307/500461.ISSN 0002-9114.JSTOR 500461.
• — (1959).Greek Painting. Great Centuries of Painting. Geneva: Skira.OCLC 487616.
• — (1963).Between Archaeology and Art History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.OCLC 5288681.
• — (1987). "The State of Attic Vase-Painting in the Mid-Sixth Century".Papers on the Amasis Painter and His World. Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum. pp. 13–28.ISBN 0-89236-093-3.
• — (1987).Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Vases in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.ISBN 978-0-85323-495-1.
• — (1992).The Art of Vase-Painting in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-0-521-33881-3.

• Heurtley, Walter Abel;Robertson, Charles Martin (1948). "Excavations in Ithaca, V: The Geometric and Later Finds from Aetos".Annual of the British School at Athens.43:1–124.doi:10.1017/S0068245400005633.ISSN 0068-2454.
• Robertson, Charles Martin;Frantz, Alison (1975).The Parthenon Frieze. New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN 0-7148-1620-5.
• Boardman, John; Robertson, Charles Martin (1979).Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: Great Britain: Castle Ashby, Northampton. Vol. 15. Oxford: Oxford University Press.ISBN 0-19-725981-2.
• Robertson, Martin;Beard, Mary (1991). "Adopting an Approach". In Rasmussen, Tom;Spivey, Nigel (eds.).Looking at Greek Vases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–36.ISBN 0-521-37524-X.

• Biographical obituary
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• Lincoln Professors of Classical Archaeology and Art
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