Robert Lutyens was born on 13 June 1901. He was the son of the architect Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869-1944) and worked as an interior designer and painter from the 1920s onwards. Between 1927 and 1931 he was in partnership with Robert Wemyss Symonds (1889-1958) in the architectural and interior design firm Symonds & Lutyens
Lutyens received commissions to design the interiors of houses of several directors of the retail firm Marks & Spencer (M & S) and their relatives. Despite no formal training as an architect, he was elected a Licentiate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (LRIBA) in 1937 and acted as a consultant architect, in association with J M Monro & Son, in developing a modular scheme which formed the basis of the façade design for over 40 M & S stores around Britain. In 1934 he joined the board of M & S. During the late 1930s he collaborated with his father in designing a pair of two-storey lodges and the principal building at Middleton Park in Oxford.
Paintings by Robert Lutyens were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1936 and 1939.
He died in South Cerney, Gloucestershire in 1972.
Examples of his paintings are in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London; St. Hughes College, University of Oxford; University of Newcastle; The Guardian News & Media Archive; and the Ruth Borchard Collection.
19, Hill Street, London (1929); 36, Hill Street, London (1935); Ridgemead House, Ridgemead Road, Enfield Green, Surrey (1937); 15 & 17, Catherine Place, London (1938); Blagdon Hall, Blagdon, Northumberland (1948); and Duke's Cottages, Narrowgate, Alnwick, Northumberland (1948). During the late 1930s he collaborated with his father in designing a pair of two-storey lodges and the principal building at Middleton Park in Oxford.
Burton, Neil. ‘Robert Lutyens and Marks and Spencer’. Thirties Society Journal no.5, 1985 pp.8-17
Lutyens, Robert and Greenwood, Harold. An Understanding of Architecture. London: People's Universities Press, 1948