Early Morning, painted in 1922,  is an extremely rare example of Walton’s most distinctive and accomplished period of her relatively short career as a painter. It dates from a time of great happiness in the early twenties when Cecile virtually lived in a women’s artist commune in Kirkcudbright, next door to her great friend, Dorothy Johnstone, who painted her portrait set in the Kirkcudbrightshire countryside, which is one of the jewels of the Fleming Collection. This period of her life is recalled in a history of the artists’ colony: ‘In Kirkcudbright, Cecile had entered a world of vivid colour where her whimsical imagination and dreamlike quality of her work could be indulged. Early Morning is an idealised self-portrait of the artist and her son Gavril and relates to her most famous painting Romance (Scottish National Gallery) where she treats the subject of motherhood in her own unconventional manner.’ There are also echoes in this work of the symbolism of her early teacher and mentor, John Duncan.

Cecile Walton, 1891-1956

Born in 1891 in Glasgow, Cecile was one of four children of artists E.A.Walton (a leading Glasgow Boy) and his wife Helen Law. Her parents were at the centre of high bohemian Glasgow – and another child, George, went on to become a leading architect and designer. As a child, Cecile was taught drawing by Jessie M King and etching by the Celtic Revival artist, John Duncan. Through him, she met fellow artists Dorothy Johnstone, and her (Cecile’s) future husband, Eric Robertson. She went on to study in Paris and at Edinburgh College of Art and exhibited while still a student at the Society of Scottish Artists in 1908 and at the RSA the following year. After WW1, Cecile founded the Edinburgh Group with her husband, Eric Robertson, Dorothy Johnstone and Mary Newbury. By 1920, her painting was said to be ‘simple, delicate and strong’ and expressing ‘more than the finite.’ By 1923, her marriage to Robertson had failed and they were divorced in 1927. Her painting faltered and she tended more to illustration ending up as a theatrical scene painter, broadcaster and journalist. Her final years were spent in the artists’ colony of Kirkcudbright. She died in 1956.