The William Roberts Society
From Past Newsletters
Pollies and primates at Birmingham
'William Roberts: England at Play' at Chichester
Publication of John Roberts's Poems for Sarah
The sale of William Roberts's house and its contents
William Roberts as portraitist
Major donation for a publishing fund
Charitable-trust status
William Roberts – the book
The Happy Family at Bournemouth
James Malpas lecture at the National Portrait Gallery
Frederick Gore on the Slade before 1914
The William Roberts Society Fitzrovia walk
William Roberts and the USA
The William Roberts Society archives
Pollies and primates at Birmingham
Reviewing the exhibition 'The Parrot in Art' (at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, from 26 January to 29 April 2007) for The Independent on 8 February 2007, Rhoda Koenig relished the 'arch confrontation of polly and primate' in WR's The Cockatoos – 'Peering down at a gawking barrel-shaped mother and the two ape-like children hanging on her, the three fastidious macaws chained to their perches are clearly indignant that the wrong species has ended up in charge.'
The Cockatoos, 1958
© The Estate of John David Roberts
'William Roberts: England at Play' – Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
This important exhibition, from 20 January to 18 March 2007, focused on William Roberts's depiction of the leisure activities of the English working class. It explored the way in which Roberts used the language of modern art to reinvigorate a tradition of recording everyday life and to portray the eccentricities, peculiarities and pastimes of those around him with a dignified humour and a constant affection. The exhibition, conceived by Andrew Gibbon Williams and curated by Simon Martin, featured major paintings from to 1920s to the 1970s, which not only charted Roberts's artistic development from his Vorticist origins to the monumental figures of his mature work, but also revealed the way in which life in England changed dramatically during the twentieth century.Work featured includes The Cinema (1920, Tate Britain), Playground (The Gutter) (1934/5, Tate Britain), Cantering to the Post (1949, Tate Britain), TV (1960, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums) and The Seaside (c. 1965–6, Arts Council Collection).
'Imagine that Picasso had been British and hung around amateur football matches or that the great modernist Fernand Léger had been addicted to dog tracks and travelling on London Routemaster buses, and you've got something of the flavour of the art of William Roberts.' So began an article by Mark Hudson in the Daily Telegraph on 13 January 2007, under the heading 'Lost treasures of the British Picasso'.
The article, heralding the 'delightful new exhibition at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester' (see above), featured quotes from an interview with Pauline Paucker, the society's chairman, and described the ongoing uncertainty about the fates of the works by WR in the estate of John Roberts. It concluded that 'While it would be a scandal if this small but precious part of our national heritage were to be broken up and sold off, it would somehow be all of a piece with the tragi-comic tale of an artist who was, even in the estimation of his staunch defender Pauline Paucker, "very much his own worst enemy".'
To read the full article, click here.
On 22 January the Pallant House show was reviewed in The Independent by Tom Lubbock, who declared, 'I'm embarrassed to admit just how much I've always liked [Roberts's'] pictures . . . because I can easily imagine all the rude things that could be said about them.' Nevertheless:
You'll find in Roberts a wide vocabulary of modern body-language, gestures never seen until the twentieth century. People putting on suntan lotion, people talking on the phone – you don't find this kind of behaviour in a Picasso. In a Roberts you do. In TV (1960) he's on to another new development in posture history: people sitting on the floor watching television, their eyes fixated on the screen . . . [This] is an art that holds various tensions: between particular things and generalised forms; between gesture and geometry; between motion and patterned gridlock; between figure and mass . . . in short, between life and idealisation. Even though sometimes the upshot is absurdity, its power lies in these tensions.
The Seaside (aka Sun-bathing ), c. 1965–6
© The Estate of John David Roberts
Simon Martin, who curated the Pallant House exhibition, was once talking with the artist John Craxton, who knew WR in the 1940s. Clive Bell had told Craxton that he had shown Picasso some works by Roberts, on which Picasso had commented, 'Bien! Il est très honnête.'
Publication of John Roberts's Poems for Sarah
(from the February 2003 newsletter)
Pauline Paucker and Marion Hutton write:
After WR's death in 1980 his wife and son, Sarah and John, became increasingly close, enjoying the daily routine of life in their much loved house and neighbourhood, busy with promoting Bobby's work and playing their Spanish guitars, all with much humour – in company they seemed to be performing an amusing double act.
When Sarah died, in 1992, John was desolate. He began to write a series of moving quatrains for his mother, voicing his sadness and his memories of their years together. Marion has a letter in which he says that he hopes to publish some of these. Pauline transcribed the fifty or so Sarah poems in John's last manuscript poetry book, and has chosen a selection from those he himself had marked as 'publishable'. Now one of our members, John Rety – a poet, publisher and friend of John's – has printed these as a handsome volume in his excellent poetry series 'Hearing Eye', based on the Torriano Meeting Room, where John read his poetry. The society's having arranged to administer the copyright for all written work by the Roberts family not only makes this publication possible, but also allows us to quote here from two contrasting pieces.
A happy early memory of childhood:
Across the town to see a Giant Flea,
a Dinosaur, a working model toy.
The train approaches; on the platform, see –
a Russian Jewess and her little boy.
But John also reflects on his mother's age and frailty, and on his own failing health. An unfinished verse, on a scrap of paper, was found on the floor near John after he died of a heart attack:
My hand supporting, and two steps more before the turn,
my thoughts go back to forty years before –
she went so lightly up those self-same stairs!
Poems for Sarah, which includes three pictures of the family, is on sale at £6. We are happy that the society has made a small contribution to publishing costs. For details of availability, contact info@williamrobertssociety.co.uk.
[Click here for a bibliography of John's writings and links to extracts from his works.]
The sale of William Roberts's house and its contents
(from the May 2002 newsletter)
The former home of William Roberts and his family at 14 St Mark's Crescent, London NW1, has now been sold through Parkway estate agents, which had been inviting offers in the region of £1.4 million.
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© The Estate of John David Roberts | |
The disposal of the contents of the house raised the awkward question of the value of the books written and printed by John. The Treasury Solicitor agreed to give these to the Society and we are most grateful to Justin Howes who has taken a generous selection of them to his Northamptonshire print workshop, where they are stored in a converted type cabinet, listed and awaiting rediscovery.
William Roberts as portraitist
(from the May 2002 newsletter)
David Cleall writes:
The quality of the William Roberts Annual Lecture was admirably maintained by Elizabeth Cayzer's consideration of William Roberts as a portrait painter at the fourth William Roberts Society AGM and lecture, held in the Ondaatje wing lecture theatre at the National Portrait Gallery, London, on 2 February 2002. She sized up to the commission with a thoroughly researched paper which focused on four portraits of Roberts's patrons and supporters: the restaurant proprietor E. Stulik, the art critic Paul Konody , T. E. Lawrence, and Maynard and Lydia Keynes. In each case Ms Cayzer gave a biographical account of the sitter with some assessment of their personality.
She argued that Roberts was more effective in the earlier two portraits, where his self-esteem was 'massaged' by the sitters. In the case of the T. E. Lawrence commission, however, the meeting of two difficult men led to a less insightful outcome, in her opinion. In the double portrait of the Keyneses, she was troubled by the stylised treatment of the hands at the centre of the portrait. From her comparing Roberts to Graham Sutherland and Maggie Hambling, it became apparent that Elizabeth Cayzer particularly values the artist that expresses psychological insights arising from a positive interaction of the painter and the sitter. In this respect Roberts was seen to be lacking. I feel that Elizabeth Cayzer's questioning of whether Roberts had a curiosity about his sitters is valid, and there is certainly an air of detachment in some of his portraits. When, however, Ms Cayzer criticised the Lawrence portrait as making Lawrence look more like a train driver, she clarified for me why I prefer Roberts's Lawrence to Augustus John's idealised and romantic Lawrence of Arabia.
Repression of emotion is neither a fashionable nor a comfortable position to adopt; however, it is an important part of the social significance of Roberts that his work embodies this English awkwardness when confronting a sitter. It would seem that Roberts's commissioned portraits were always difficult experiences, but I do not necessary find them unrewarding because of this. The double portrait of Maynard and Lydia Keynes presents an intriguing tension between the desire to depict this awesome couple as people but also, through the eyes of this particularly English cubist, to render them as designs on canvas.
Major donation for a publishing fund
(from the May 2002 newsletter)
We are excited to announce a £2,300 donation from a very generous member of the Society, to be used to establish a publications fund and a slide library. The donor has suggested that the printing of short monographs on aspects of Roberts's work and the publication of John's poems about Sarah and WR are good projects to start with.
Charitable-trust status
(from the May 2002 newsletter)
This was finally confirmed in February. Our registered charity no. is 1090538. We are most grateful to Michael Mitzman for liaising with the Charity Commissioners to achieve this important step forward for the Society. We are also grateful and indebted to a member who has generously funded the exercise.
The Happy Family at Bournemouth
(from the August 2001 newsletter)
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© The Estate of John David Roberts | |
David Cleall writes:
This year has seen the reopening of Bournemouth's Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum after a £2 million refurbishment. William Roberts's The Happy Family is situated in a gallery especially suitable for families and children called 'Stories, Voices and Journeys'. The picture dates from 1924–5 – after his first one-man show and about the time he was working on illustrations for The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Although the picture is like the earlier Bank Holiday in the Park in its subject matter, The Happy Family uses social observation rather than social criticism and has less of a satirical edge.
The busy composition overlaps three generations. The firm hand of an otherwise serene mother yanks back a curious toddler from chasing birds. Her partner is asleep on the grass. Central to the picture is an older woman who appears to be the grandmother holding a babe at arm's length, cooing to the child. Above and around the grouping three teenagers boisterously play ball. By compressing the action into a restricted pictorial space Roberts emphasises the formal design of the figures. Their simplified features and a use of vibrant but flat colour creates a tension typical of Roberts's work between the abstract and the representational. The treatment of the faces is disturbingly inconsistent. The central women are caricatured with warmth as recognisable maternal images, the ball players have a less attractive flattening of their facial features, whilst the reclining male figure demonstrates skilful use of foreshortened perspective and is the most worked out of all the figures. The painterly games that Roberts enjoys can be shared by young visitors to the gallery, as a reproduction of The Happy Family has been turned into a wooden jigsaw. The bright patterns of colour can be lifted out, played with and then reconstructed into The Happy Family .
James Malpas lecture at the National Portrait Gallery
(from the August 2001 newsletter)
David Cleall writes:
Whilst the previous locations for the William Roberts lectures – the Conway Hall and University College – have had an appropriate air of William Roberts-style austerity, the plushness of the National Portrait Gallery Lecture Theatre was greeted with great enthusiasm by the stalwarts who assembled on Saturday 31 March for James Malpas's lecture. Perhaps it was a feeling that such comfortable and professional surroundings conferred greater status on the activities of the WRS, or perhaps it was just a relief to have somewhere comfortable to sit.
From the start it was clear that James Malpas was not going to be upstaged by the building and he launched into a stimulating and densely packed lecture concentrating on early Roberts – from the Slade, Vorticism and the immediate post-World War One period. Emphasising the importance of London as a vibrant centre of artistic activity in the pre-WW1 period, James Malpas examined Roberts's early Slade drawing, demonstrating the fusion of influences from the Great Masters to the modernism that was erupting in London. Making excellent use of the NPG's dual projection system, comparison was made between Roberts and his Slade contemporary David Bomberg. Whilst it is logical that the older Bomberg would be an influence on the young Roberts, James Malpas used slides of The Return of Ulysses to consider the influence that William Roberts's bold use of colour was to have on Bomberg's work. Again using slides, James Malpas was very effective in unpicking Roberts's controversial Vorticist composition St George and the Dragon – a composition that I've always struggled with!
In the context of Wyndham Lewis, the Rebel Art Centre and Blast, James Malpas suggested that Two Step was a 'masterpiece' of the period – once again Roberts's use of a strident orange was celebrated and through the dual projection of slides Roberts' experimental use of illusory three-dimensional space was contrasted with the busy flatness of Wyndham Lewis's compositions of the time. James Malpas dryly commented that 'Unlike Wyndham Lewis, William Roberts knew when to stop!'
In the final section of his lecture, James Malpas considered the problem of what was a suitable subject for these modernists as they returned from the war and moved on from interpreting their experiences and feelings through their art. It was suggested that Roberts's pre-war mixture of the representational and the formal in pictures such as The Holy Child and The Toe Dancer, for example, prepared the way for his later work in a way that some of the Vorticists were unable to draw upon. The subject of dance had already been visited by Roberts in the Vorticist Dancers (1913), as well as Two-step (1915) and James Malpas explained the appeal of the dance as a subject matter as 'a way of freeing painting from the narrative – whilst maintaining human content'. A key Roberts picture to illustrate this point was the huge The Dancers (1919) at the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art.
I hope that I've been fairly faithful to some of the ideas that James Malpas put across and would like to conclude on behalf of the committee in thanking James for researching and presenting such a stimulating talk. Many thanks also to Head of Education, John Cooper, of the NPG for allowing us to use their excellent facilities.
Frederick Gore on the Slade before 1914
(from the March 2001 newsletter)
Pauline Paucker writes:
For this year's annual lecture and annual general meeting on 13 November 2000 we chose University College as the venue: home of the Slade School, which was the subject of Frederick Gore's illustrated talk: 'The Slade – pre 1914'.
Frederick Gore, son of William Roberts's contemporary Spencer Gore, was, like his father, a student at the Slade and is known as an artist and teacher. He had chosen to talk about the talented group who had been at the Slade around the same time as Roberts, and of their later careers.
He spoke of the more easy-going atmosphere of those days, of the high standard of draughtsmanship under Tonks, and of the kind of teaching then current in the painting school. He showed how this group of students was bowled over by the innovatory work coming from Paris, and its impact on these talented young artists. It was fascinating to hear a practising painter commenting on the work of a previous generation to his own, and one who as a teacher has seen many changing fashion in art and art-teaching. There were no dogmatic statements, no wrapping-up of assorted artists in packages; here was an artist speaking pragmatically and understandingly of other artists, setting William Roberts among his contemporaries. He showed a wide range of slides (and here we are grateful to Therese Wassily Saba for taking on the supervision of the projector).
After the lecture, despite a slight hitch in the arrangements, we went across the courtyard to the Haldane Room for drinks and chat, as guests of Ruth Artmonsky (to whom many thanks). Frederick Gore and his wife stayed with us to the end; he answering questions and talking to changing circles of admirers.
The William Roberts Society Fitzrovia walk
(from the October 2000 newsletter)
We were most fortunate to be led by an artist and former Fitzrovia resident Roland Collins, whose knowledge on this subject is surely unsurpassable.
Roland Collins writes:
In May a group of members set out from London's Tottenham Court Road to beat the bounds of the Roberts family's world at the end of World War One.
With a glance over our shoulders at Charing Cross Road at St Martin's School of Art, where young Roberts attended evening classes, we passed the stage door of the Oxford Music Hall, which had just been converted by G. B. Cochran into a home for musical comedy. Turning into Hanway Place, a backwater once the main through route to Bloomsbury, we entered Rathbone Place taking us directly into Fitzrovia. Here were Rowney and Windsor & Newton, the eighteenth-century artists' materials suppliers, reflecting the way the area had been colonised by artists. Augustus John introduced Caitlin MacNamara to Dylan Thomas in the Wheatsheaf, and in the house where Ferns had been roasting coffee since 1903 Flaxman and William Blake were entertained by the local minister's wife.
Round the corner at No. 1 Percy Street was Rudolph Stulik's Tour Eiffel restaurant, where in 1914 Wyndham Lewis held a launch party for Blast, the event recorded by Roberts in a painting now in the Tate Britain. On leave after the Battle of Arras in 1917 Roberts took a room here and had a memorable dinner with Hope-Johnson, Gerald Brenan and Augustus John. Across the road at No. 32 WR and his wife, Sarah, moved into the attic flat in 1918, and their son, John, was born there the next year.* Their neighbours were artists and corset-makers, musicians and diamond-cutters, and three doors away a common lodging-house had recently closed after sixty years.
In Charlotte Street the Fitzroy Tavern had just had a new landlord, Judah Kleinfeld, and L'Etoile, Bertorelli's and Schmidt's were already established restaurants. Crossing Goodge Street, (a street market in Roberts's day on Friday and Saturday), we passed the sites of the Scala Theatre, a cinema where in 1915 Birth of a Nation was screened, and Constable's house, where he died in the attic bedroom.
We trod hallowed ground in Fitzroy Street. Sickert, Augustus John, Paul Nash, Vanessa Bell and Henry Lamb all had studios here, and Gilman's Camden Town Group had linked with Roberts's Vorticists in 1913 to become The London Group. That year in Roger Fry's Omega Workshop in Fitzroy Square Roberts briefly diverted his painting skills to decorating penknives, lampshades and scarves for half a sovereign a visit, three mornings a week.
In Whitfield Street we exercised our imaginations on the playground site to recreate the extravagantly Moorish architecture of the St Pancras Baths and Wash-houses. William and Sarah walked here from Percy Street with their weekly wash and to have their weekly bath. We could have ended the excursion as they did in the ABC teashop on the corner of Tottenham Court Road, had it still been there.
* John used to say that he was born in Percy Street, but his birth certificate records his place of birth as 54 Leigham Court Road, Streatham.
William Roberts and the USA
(from the October 2000 newsletter)
Report by Pauline Paucker:
Sarah and John had ambivalent feelings about the United States (which they never visited). It took one American buyer several visits to St Mark's Crescent, to be vetted at the tea-table, before she was considered worthy to own a Roberts. She passed the tests and bought two pieces.
Certainly, amongst collectors in the US there has not been much interest in or knowledge of British art in the early twentieth century. France was the country. One collector in the San Francisco area has specialised in buying Vorticist works on paper, including the striking Roberts Behind the Scenes of 1920. When I saw a selection shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1993, this had been effectively used for the catalogue frontispiece. A great deal of explanatory text was needed to present the works.
Visiting MoMA, New York, last year, I was shown their three Roberts, all works on paper, a neat selection of differing styles. For the earlier period The Wedding , c. 1920, and a youthful self-portrait of the same time. The third, Stulik among the Artists, is from 1948. Stulik, owner of the Tour Eiffel restaurant, is shown in a chef's hat and white overalls, surrounded by the artists he fed so well. (Sarah once told me that the food at the Tour Eiffel 'was always delicious').
The Yale Center for British Art at New Haven, Connecticut, also has three works on paper, acquired in the 1990s. One is a much later self-portrait of the 1970s: WR sports a pink shirt, yellow tie, yellow eyebrows – he's holding a drawing-board. The Troubadours of 1919 is a very fine example of the early period and there is a squared-up watercolour for The Vorticists at The Tour Eiffel, 1958. This differs in detail from the painting in the Tate, where Stulik holds out a plate with a slice of gateau St Honoré (one of his specialities). Here he spreads his hands in an expansive gesture.
We have traced a few Roberts in private hands in the US but would be grateful for any information on other work there, in galleries or privately owned.
The William Roberts Society archives
(from the September 1999 newsletter)
We are attempting to compile a record of the Roberts's house: photographic, video, sound.
So far we have:
- A set of 28 colour, 10 black and-white photographs, taken by David Kendall for the
Royal Commission for the Historic Monuments of England, showing the interior and
the garden façade.
- A set of photographs taken at various times by Pauline Paucker. These include:
A set of photographs of the kitchen, taken in Sarah's lifetime (at her request).
Some further photographs of paintings on display in the house.
A set showing the paintings on display in the interior of the house, at John's death, before their removal into safekeeping.
Assorted photographs of the interior of the house, taken after John's death.
- A video of the interior, by Myvanwy Evans and Emily Johns.
- Copies of photographs of Sarah and William Roberts, including Sarah as a young girl,
William and Sarah with Bernard Meninsky and his wife, Sarah in Paris. Also photos
of John and Sarah in the garden of No. 14, in the house, and in Morocco.
- Tape descriptions of the house, room by room, with associated anecdotes, by Pauline
Paucker and Cathy Davey.
- A video of Sarah and John in Leeds: Yorkshire Television's programme on Jacob Kramer,
in which Sarah was interviewed. (She and John had been invited to Leeds for the naming
of the Jacob Kramer Art College.)
- Short memoirs:
Marion Hutton: An eleven-page memoir of Sarah and John Roberts, whom Marion knew from Camden Town days, before she moved to Tenby. This includes their later visits to Tenby. A set of photographs taken in Tenby shows Sarah and John at the unveiling ceremony for the plaque marking the artist Nina Hamnett's birthplace.
Julia Ramos: An eight-page memoir, including her parents' memories of William and Sarah in pre-war Fitzrovia, and her later friendship with John. Also, seven pages commenting on WR's account of his time on the RA council. (Her father, Sir Henry Rushbury, had been Keeper in 1949–1962).
Maria Scott: Maria Scott was a friend of Sarah's in war-time Oxford. A two-page memoir, which she wrote on hearing of Sarah's death, describes their meeting and consequent friendship. A photograph shows her with Sarah outside No. 16 Fitzroy Street, where she was then living (maybe taken in 1947).
Tony Baker: Tony is one of the cousins on the Roberts side. The material he has put together includes a family tree, information on the family background, from family memories, and copies of family photographs, including William Roberts's grandmother and her children, William Roberts's mother, Emma, and one of the Roberts brothers. Also a photograph of WR at his easel: the painting is a portrait of Sarah in a flamboyant hat.
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