Robertson was strongly influenced by the work of John Duncan, but for a brief period after the First World War Robertson adopted an unusual semi-abstract style, which has affinities with the Vorticist work of Wyndham Lewis and William Roberts. Some of these paintings dwell on his harrowing experiences in an ambulance unit in the First World War. Scottish painters were generally slow or unwilling to adopt the avant-garde styles sweeping across Europe in the 1920s, making this an unusual and important work in early twentieth-century Scottish art.