Three quarter length portrait, the sitter facing slightly towards the left, wearing a Vice Chancellor's gown which is red with a gold trim over his black suit and bow tie, and sitting with his hands clasped on his lap. Dark grey background.

Charles Grant Robertson was a historian. He came from Oxford where he was a Fellow of All Souls College and was a tutor the Prince of Wales. He suceeded Sir Oliver Lodge as Vice-Chancellor in 1920 and continued his post up until 1938. Through his influence and diplomacy, the University built the Barber Institute in 1939. The artist here, James Gunn, was a Glaswegian painter who later moved to Paris where he remained up until 1914, when he returned to England and became an important portrait painter.