Art

Four of the Robinsons worked as professional artists and left a large collection of works.

Rowland Evans Robinson

Rowland trained in New York City as a young man and was a master of the pencil drawing, many of which he sold to the farm and other periodicals of his day. The Museum holds more than 2,000 of his drawings, tracings, rough sketches, published illustrations, and paintings. Rokeby Museum’s 2015 exhibit — The Farm: Drawings of Rowland Evans Robinson, 1850–1880, will be on view at Rokeby Museum’s Education Center until October 25, 2015.

Ann Stevens Robinson

Ann was not a working artist, though she sold occasional paintings. She worked mostly in oils, creating traditional Victorian still lifes; the collection includes approximately 200 works.

Mary Robinson Perkins

Mary, Rowland and Ann’s daughter, worked as a botanical artist after graduating from college, and the Museum owns a number of her ink drawings.

Rachael Robinson Elmer

Rachael, the older daughter of Rowland and Ann, was the most talented and successful of the family artists. Showing artistic talent and interest at a young age, Rachael was schooled by her mother, took a weekly art lesson in Burlington, and studied at a studio in New York City — all before her teens. She settled in New York as a young woman, studying at the Art Students League and establishing herself as a commercial artist. She made a name for herself when she created “Art-Lover’s New York” — a set of twelve fine art city view postcards in 1914. A second set, six linoleum block prints that she produced herself, added to her renown. With these eighteen cards, Rachael changed the world of American postcards. Sadly, she died not long after — in the Spanish flu epidemic, in New York, in February 1919, when she was just 40 years old.