Hutchison's paintings sought an underlying reality: to grasp a common humanity in his topics. His charming compositions reveal a late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century taste for sights of Scottish rural and domestic life. The artist painted several scenes of children in rural or domestic settings.

Robert Gemmell Hutchison, 1855-1936

Robert Gemmell Hutchison RSA RSW was a Scottish landscape artist who specialised in coastal scenes. Gemmell was educated in Edinburgh and encouraged to pursue oil painting after first training as a seal engraver at the Trustees Academy on Picardy Place under James Campbell Noble. In 1878, he opened his own studio at 1 India Buildings (at the top of Victoria Street) and was immediately successful, exhibiting at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1879 and the Royal Academy in 1881. He quickly transitioned from empty seascapes, mostly of the Fife coast, to genre paintings, mostly of young girls sitting on the beach. The charming compositions of Robert Gemmell Hutchison provide insight into the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century taste for scenes of rural and domestic life. In December 1928, he had his first one-man show in London at Barbizon House, where 34 of his illustrations were displayed. Throughout his life, he lived in Musselburgh and Edinburgh. On August 22, 1936, he died at his daughter's home in Coldingham. He is buried on one of the curving paths to the south-west in Dean Cemetery.