Basil William Robinson, FBA, FSA, FRAS (20 June 1912 – 29 December 2005) was a British art scholar and author, specializing in Asian art and history.

Life

Robinson was born in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, and attended

Winchester College Winchester College is a public school (fee-charging independent day and boarding school) in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of ...

and

Corpus Christi College, Oxford Corpus Christi College (formally, Corpus Christi College in the University of Oxford; informally abbreviated as Corpus or CCC) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1517, it is the 12t ...

.Waterhouse, p. 101 He joined the staff of the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

in 1939 and was shortly afterwards transferred to the Department of Metalwork where, apart from war service in the East from 1939 to 1946, he spent the rest of his career. He served as Keeper of the Department of Metalwork from 1966 until his retirement in 1972. In 1967 he was elected honorary president of the To-ken Society of Great Britain and was president of the

Royal Asiatic Society The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), was established, according to its royal charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the en ...

from 1970 to 1973. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a Fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars spa ...

. His principal fields of scholarship were: Persian miniature paintings (he developed the standard classification and chronology),

Japanese sword A is one of several types of traditionally made swords from Japan. Bronze swords were made as early as the Yayoi period (1000 BC – 300 AD), though most people generally refer to the curved blades made from the Heian period (794 – 1185) to ...

s, and the artist

Utagawa Kuniyoshi Utagawa Kuniyoshi ( ja, 歌川国芳, ; January 1, 1798 – April 14, 1861) was one of the last great masters of the Japanese ukiyo-e style of woodblock prints and painting.Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric ''et al'' (2005). "Kuniyoshi" in He was ...

(he established the artist's place among the great masters of ''

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk t ...

''). He died in 2005. He had married twice: firstly Mary Stewart, who died in 1954, and secondly Oriel Steel, with whom he had a son and a daughter.

Works

Robinson's publications include: * Robinson, B. W., ''Islamic art in the Keir collection'', London, Boston, Faber and Faber, 1988 * Robinson, B. W., ''Islamic painting and the arts of the book'', London, Faber and Faber, 1976 * Diba, Layla, S., Maryam Ekhtiar with essays by B.W. Robinson, ''Royal Persian paintings, the Qajar epoch, 1785-1925'', Brooklyn, N.Y., Brooklyn Museum, 1998 * Robinson, B. W., ''Japanese sword-fittings and associated metalwork'', Genève, Collections Baur, 1980 * Robinson, Basil W., ''Orient d'un collectionneur: miniatures persanes, textiles, céramiques, orfèvrerie rassemblés par Jean Pozzi, collections du Musée d'art et d'histoire'', Genève, du Musée historique des tissus, 1992 * Robinson, B. W., ''Persian paintings in the India Office Library, a descriptive catalogue'', London, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1976 * Robinson, B. W., ''Persian paintings in the John Rylands Library, a descriptive catalogue'', John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1980 * Khalili, Nasser D., B.W. Robinson and Tim Stanley, ''Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, Lacquer of the Islamic lands'', Oxford University Press, 1996 * Omar Khayyam, ''Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Persian miniatures'', translation by Edward Fitzgerald, notes by B. W. Robinson, New York, Crescent Books, 1979 * Robinson, B. W., ''Arms and armour of old Japan'', London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1951 * Robinson, B. W., ''Arts of the Japanese sword'', London, Faber and Faber, 1961 * Robinson, B. W., ''Arts of the Japanese sword, 2nd ed.'', London, Faber and Faber, 1970 * Robinson, B. W., ''Chinese cloisonné enamels'', London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1972 * Robinson, B. W., ''Descriptive catalogue of the Persian paintings in the Bodleian Library'', Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1958 * Robinson, B. W., ''Fifteenth-century Persian painting, problems and issues'', New York : New York University Press, 1991 * Robinson, B. W., ''Hiroshige'', New York, Barnes & Noble, 1964 * Robinson, B.W., "Hiroshige", Paris, marabout université, 1963 * Robinson, B. W., ''The John Rylands Lalā wa Majnūn and the Bodleian Nawāʻī of 1485; a royal Timurid manuscript'', Manchester, 1954 * Robinson, B. W., ''Kuniyoshi'', London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1961 * Robinson, B. W., ''Kuniyoshi, ein Meister des japanischen Farbholzschnitts'', Essen, Burkhard-Verlag, 1963 * Robinson, B. W., ''Kuniyoshi, the warrior-prints'', Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1982 * Robinson, B. W. and

Basil Gray Basil Gray, (1904 – 1989), was an art historian, Islamicist, author, and the head of the British Museum's Oriental department. Early life Basil Gray was born in 1904 at Kensington, the son to Charles Gray and Florence Elworthy Cowell. His f ...

, ''Persian art of the book: catalogue of an exhibition held at the Bodleian Library to mark the sixth International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology'', Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1972 * Robinson, B. W., ''Persian drawings from the 14th through the 19th century'', Boston, Little, Brown, 1976 * Robinson, B. W., ''Persian miniature painting from collections in the British Isles'', London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1967 * Robinson, B. W., ''Persian miniatures'', New York, Citadel Press, 1957 * Robinson, B. W., ''Les Plus beaux dessins persans'', Paris, Éditions du Chêne, 1966 * Robinson, B. W., ''Primer of Japanese sword-blades'', Leatherhead, Surrey, Dyer, the Printer, 1955 * Robinson, B. W., ''Some illustrated Persian manuscripts in the John Rylands Library'', Manchester, .d.* Robinson, B. W., ''Studies in Persian art'', London, Pindar Press, 1993

References

* Kennedy, Robin, In memoriam, B. W. Robinson, ''Andon'' 80, 2006, pp. 48–50. * Waterhouse, David, B. W. Robinson (1912-2005), Curator and Collector, ''Impressions'', No. 28, 2006-2007, pp. 100–103. {{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, Basil William 1912 births 2005 deaths People educated at Winchester College Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Oxford English art historians English orientalists English curators British Japanologists People associated with the Victoria and Albert Museum Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London Presidents of the Royal Asiatic Society Fellows of the British Academy