Robert Henderson Blyth
Scottish artist (1919–1970)
Robert Henderson Blyth (21 May 1919 – 18 May 1970) was a Scottish landscape painter and artist.
Life and work
Blyth was born in the Newlands area of Glasgow and studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1934 to 1939.
Blyth joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1941 and served with them until the end of the Second World War. During the war Blyth continued to paint and sketch, whilst on active service in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Four paintings from this period were acquired by the War Artists' Advisory Committee. Towards the end of the conflict Blyth's unit, 157 Ambulance, was based in Hamburg much of which had been devastated by RAF bombing raids in 1943. Blyth used the background of a destroyed city in his most famous painting, In the Image of Man. Painted after the war ended the painting's title parodies the Judeo-Christian concept of man made in the image of God and shows a city in ruins behind a bomb damaged crucifix.
In 1945 Blyth won the Guthrie Award from the Royal Scottish Academy. In 1946 he painted Existence Precarious, a self-portrait as a soldier in a trench, which is now in the National Gallery of Scotland.
The public source identifies “Robert Henderson Blyth” as scottish artist (1919–1970). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Robert, Henderson and Blyth.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17308820. VIAF identifies the subject as 12125110. The Library of Congress control number is no2008109580. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1970, 1934 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert Henderson Blyth” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.