The William Roberts Society

William Roberts:

The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, Spring 1915

Illustration © The Estate of John David Roberts. Reproduced with the permission of the William Roberts Society. Catalogue information based on the catalogue raisonné by David Cleall. For this and full details of the exhibitions cited, see the links below.

The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, Spring 1915, 1961–2
Oil on canvas, 183 cm x 213.5 cm

The Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, at 1 Percy Street, London W1, was a haunt of the Vorticist painters. The picture shows (seated, left to right) Cuthbert Hamilton, Ezra Pound, William Roberts, Wyndham Lewis, Frederick Etchells and Edward Wadsworth; (standing in the doorway) Jessica Dismorr and Helen Saunders; (right) Joe, the waiter, and Rudolph Stulik, the proprietor of the restaurant from 1908 to 1937. Etchells is holding the first issue of the Vorticist publication Blast!.
Roberts commented on the evenings at the restaurant in The Listener (21 March 1957), 'In my memory la cuisine française and Vorticism are indissolubly linked.'
PROVENANCE: Purchased from the artist by the Tate Gallery (T00528, Chantrey purchase, 1962)
EXHIBITION HISTORY: Royal Academy 1962, Hayward Gallery 1974, Newcastle 2004