WALTER ROBERTSON (IRISH d. 1801) Portrait miniature of a young Gentleman wearing dark blue coat, buff coloured waistcoat and tied white cravat Watercolour on ivory Gold frame with bright-cut edge within plaited hair border secured with gold buckle at the base of the portrait; the reverse with gold monogram JMP on plaited hair studded with gold stars set within bright cut-mount blue glass and further gold bright cut border Oval, 72 mm high (3 in) Exhibited: Comerford Collection at the Irish Architectural Archives, Dublin, 2009 Literature: The Comerford Collection: Portrait Miniatures, (privately published, Dublin, 2009) pp 8, 36 (# 134); Walter G. Stickland, Dictionary of Irish Artists, 1913 Walter was the elder brother of the miniaturist Charles Robertson. Around 1784 he went to London and was practicing there for the next few years. He did not, however, exhibit at the Royal Academy or elsewhere, and nothing is known of him during that period. Returning to Dublin, in 1792, he was made bankrupt. He had become acquainted in London with Gilbert Stuart, and when Stuart went to America early in 1793, Robertson accompanied him, both sailing in the same ship. Robertson, who was known as "Irish Robertson" to distinguish him from the two Scottish miniature painters, Archibald and Alexander Robertson working in America in the same time, gained some notice by his miniature copies of Stuart's portraits. His career in America was probably not very successful, for he left the country in 1795 and made is way to India. Although Robertson held for some years a leading postion in Dublin as a miniature painter and is considered, as Pasquin tells us, "as the first professor of his department of the arts in Ireland for several years", his work is now quite unknown.