Robert MacBryde was born in Maybole, Ayrshire, Scotland. He left school at an early age to be apprenticed to an engineering works, and later studied at Glasgow School of Art, where he met Robert Colquhoun. The two became lifelong friends and companions, known under the sobriquet of the Two Roberts: they shared a home, a studio and the same circle of friends, that included Jankel Adler, John Minton, John Craxton and Prunella Clough, and remained together until Colquhoun’s death from alcoholism in 1962. They moved to London in 1941 where Colquhoun had his first solo exhibition the following year and MacBryde his only solo exhibition in 1943. The Two Roberts shared similar subjects, and although MacBryde was considered the lesser artist, his strong sense of colour and pattern was shown at its best in his still life paintings of the late 1940s. Following eviction from their studio, they moved to Lewes in East Sussex and were given a studio by Frances Byng Stamper and her sister Caroline Lucas, who were then running the Miller’s Press. The sisters commissioned a number of lithographs including Sideboard with Vegetables; this print was included in the exhibition of the Society of London Painter-Printers mounted at the Redfern Gallery, London in 1948.

Out of Print: British Printmaking 1946 - 1976, The British Council 1994

Further reading:
Colquhoun and MacBryde: A Retrospective, introduction by John Griffiths, Glasgow Print Studio 1990