The William Roberts Society
From Past Newsletters
The Chess Players: a chequered response
'Fallen humanity' offends council
The Revolt in the Desert
WR in the Tate archive
The artist's models
A 'new' portrait by WR
WR works to go to the Tate
Richard Cork on William Roberts
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
'The Chess Players: a chequered response
The sale of WR's The Chess Players 1929–30 for £1,161,250, after a four-way bidding battle at Sotheby's on 10 May 2012, was a striking vindication not only of Roberts but also of this painting, which had not always been well received.
The Chess Players, 1929–30
© The Estate of John David Roberts
In 1931 P. G. Konody in The Observer described it as 'a dramatic rendering of a whole phase of human life and nature' and praised Roberts's 'faculty of stating with unerring precision the essential character of certain aspects of humanity'. Then in 1934–5 the picture was one of 253 works of 'Contemporary British Art' which the Empire Art Loan Collections Society sent to tour New Zealand and Australia.
The tour began in Christchurch. The review in the Christchurch Press was polite, but comments in the paper's letters columns were less so, and The Chess Players was the main target of criticism. 'Poker Ned', for example, described it as showing 'some men playing chess with glassy marbles stuck in their heads to represent their eyeballs', and claimed he had been advised to 'move back 15 feet and stand on my head [to] get the beauty of the picture'. He had really gone to the show, he said, 'to divert my mind from what Larwood was going to do next, but while there I was sorry I did not have Larwood with me practising bodyline bowling' (which was odd, as the controversially aggressive English bowler Harold Larwood had by then ended his Test career).
'Much Disappointed' complained of WR's 'decadent figures with small heads and monstrous hands', and saw in many of the pictures 'the modern worship of ugliness instead of beauty'. A. Wells Newton was baffled by 'the mentality of a man who depicts fellow human being as [Roberts] does . . . Does this man hold a low view of his fellow creatures, or is this merely his joke against the critics?' For him, Roberts's work was 'not art, but rather . . . a travesty of art, a stultification of and almost one might say a prostitution of art'. And there was more in the same vein.
It was left to W. Basil Honour of the modernist New Zealand Society of Artists to point out that 'Mr. Newton makes the obvious error of criticising pictures because he does not like them. He does not like them because he does not understand them or know them. In front of a piece of intricate machinery he would remain mute. But before a work of art he expands himself. He assumes it should be something in the nature of a reproduction of his own vision of things, and is annoyed that artists are not so flattering.'
In Adelaide it was much the same story, with one of the writers to The Advertiser detecting 'the spirit of Bolshevism' in the works as a whole, and another declaring that 'pictures such as "The Chess Players," by William Roberts, appear to me as an affront to all that is lovely and beautiful in art.'
In Melbourne The Argus 's reviewer commented that 'The player in the foreground with the diminutive cranium appears to be innocent of the possible violence in the rolling blue eyes of his companions; the lady with the enormous deltoids looks a match for anyone with either dagger or pistol; and the lady with the luxuriant bosom looks completely "fed up" not only with her lay figure hands, which cannot turn the page, but with everything else.' And so it went on.
In contrast, when the picture was shown in Wolverhampton in 1937, the Express and Star seemed quite restrained in its comment that it 'irresistibly reminds one of a trio of American gangsters and their "molls"', with its 'crude forms intentionally created by an artist who can also produce the vivid and handsome "Creole Woman", in which anatomical knowledge is demonstrated to be complete'.
'Fallen humanity' offends council
One of the works in Tate Britain's 2012–13 William Roberts display was a study for his painting The Garden of Eden. When the painting was shown in a London Artists' Association exhibition in New Bond Street in June 1929 The Times described it as 'touching in its observation of fallen humanity. The disapproving deer is a comment of genius.' But the picture had earlier generated a rather different reaction.
The Garden of Eden, c.1926
© The Estate of John David Roberts
In 1928, under the title Adam and Eve, it was part of an LAA exhibition that opened at the municipal art gallery in Southport on 14 January and on the same day was reviewed by the Southport Visiter. Three works by WR received particular praise; Adam and Eve was not mentioned.
On 20 January a mayoral reception was held in the municipal buildings, and refreshments were served in the art gallery. According to the Southport Journal, 'throughout the evening small crowds of guests looked puzzled at some of the problem pictures, and the names given were entertaining if not illuminating'. Although, as the Visiter noted, the 'regular patrons' of the gallery seem to have had no objection to Adam and Eve, the chairman of the Libraries and Arts Committee was subsequently asked to have it withdrawn from show, and at a committee meeting on the 23rd a majority agreed to this.
In London the Evening News and the Evening Standard reported this decision, and the Manchester Guardian commented that 'how a town councillor can find any sensuousness, any fleshly school of painting in the art of William Roberts ["the least realistic of all our notable painters"] beats comprehension.' Worried about Southport being seen as 'a population of Mrs. Grundys', the Journal thought that, especially 'in these days when every daily newspaper gives us pictorial advertisements of big drapery stores that leave very little to the imagination', it would have been 'better to leave it to the public's own judgment' rather than withdraw the picture.
A speaker at a meeting of the Southport Trades Council and Labour Party thought the town was 'made ridiculous' by the council's action and suggested that the Education Committee might like to have a 'nice little heresy hunt' if it found that the theory of evolution was being taught in local schools. But another speaker felt the Labour Party had 'something better to do than fritter away its time making itself look ridiculous on such a piffling subject', and that seemed to end the discussion.
On the 28th the Visiter carried a letter deploring 'an unexampled bowing down to an outburst of excessive prudish "refanement"' but suggesting that London galleries be contacted urgently to 'see to it that all nude statuary may be fittingly draped, and all studies of the "fleshly school of painting" may be veiled, so as not to offend the tender susceptibilities of our super-sensitive citizens', some of whom might be visiting the capital on a rail excursion advertised for that very day. But that was apparently the only letter published for or against the council's decision, and there things seemed to rest as far as Southport was concerned.
However, the catalogue of WR's 1965 Arts Council retrospective states that The Garden of Eden was rejected from the Twenty-eighth Annual International Exhibition of Painting at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, in late 1929, 'on the grounds that American taste was not yet ready for such pictures' – it apparently did not even make it past the selection committee, for it does not appear in the exhibition's catalogue. It is now in the Ingram Collection of Modern British Art, on a wall of Chris Ingram's New York flat.
The Revolt in the Desert
By Tim Craven
[We invited Tim Craven, Lead Curatorial Officer in the Arts and Heritage department of Southampton City Council, to write about one of the works by WR in his care, and are grateful for the following piece.]
The Revolt in the Desert, 1952
© The Estate of John David Roberts
Southampton City Art Gallery purchased William Roberts's The Revolt in the Desert through the F. W. Smith Bequest Fund in 1958, for £750. The previous owner was Roberts's friend and patron Ernest Cooper, of Lindfield, Sussex. Roberts's watercolour The Travelling Cradle was acquired at the same time through the same means, though from the Leicester Galleries.
A 1995 letter from Cooper (aged 85) to the gallery states that he bought The Revolt in the Desert from the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1952 for £250, and that John Rothenstein borrowed it to show at the Tate Gallery for a whole year. He wrote that Maurice Palmer, Southampton's curator from 1950 to 1970, had kindly housed about 24 of Roberts's works that Cooper owned but no longer had the space to display when he moved to London. With the proceeds of the Southampton sale ('You could do a lot with £500 in those days'), Cooper and his first wife, Sadie, took Roberts and his wife, Sarah, on a trip to Greece, having just seen a memorable performance of Berlioz's The Trojans at Covent Garden together: 'I had the wild idea that "Bobby" would do a painting to match it. In the event his chief wish in Athens was to find a substitute for the Joe Lyons Corner Houses which were our favourite meeting places.'
T. E. Lawrence – the subject of The Revolt in the Desert – had admired Roberts's work and invited him along with other artists, including fellow Vorticist Edward Wadsworth, to illustrate his epic account of his role in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, published by subscription in 1926. Robert's Camel March was composed with the help of photographs lent to him by Lawrence to help with the details. Lawrence was delighted with the results: 'It's a trifle . . . but the technique of dress, shapes of camels, seats of riders etc. are as right as if you had worked them up on the spot. I'm afraid that means that you have exhausted yourself in continual study of those photographs. However I'm enormously grateful.'
The legend of 'Lawrence of Arabia' began to grow when details of his exploits became known after the war, and in August 1922 Lawrence astonished friends and critics alike by joining the Royal Air Force at the lowliest rank and under an assumed name to escape press harassment. The struggles of a less than fit, over-age Aircraftman John Hume Ross to cope with the rigours of the RAF's training camp at Uxbridge gave him the subject for his second book, The Mint. It is so full of parade-ground, blasphemous language that it was not printed in an unexpurgated edition until the 1970s. In 1922 Roberts painted a strong but sympathetic portrait (now in the Ashmolean Museum) of Lawrence posing as Ross in his new RAF uniform. The portrait suggests that Roberts liked and respected Lawrence without regard to his reputation.
Lawrence was to die in a motorcycle accident in 1935, but The Revolt in the Desert clearly shows that Roberts's deep admiration for him persisted, as this magnificent tribute was not painted until 1952. Lawrence – his identity made clear by his gold dagger and blue eyes – is depicted at bottom right, accompanied by a party of Bedouin tribesmen, some on foot and others mounted on camels.
This extraordinary work is often on display at Southampton City Art Gallery, and is much loved by regular visitors.
In his pamphlet Early Years, written in September 1977 and published posthumously in 1982, William Roberts summarised his relations with T. E. Lawrence as follows: 'In 1920 Colin Gill, who had been a fellow-student at the Slade, sent me a note saying "Colonel Lawrence is seeking artists to make portrait drawings for a book he is producing; get in touch with him." I wrote to Lawrence and as a result I contributed several portrait drawings to "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", besides a painting of Lawrence in his Royal Air Force uniform. He sat for this portrait in a room I was using at Coleherne Terrace, Earl's Court . . . He lent me during several Summers his small woodman's cottage at Clouds Hill in Dorset.'
Lawrence was delighted by the Seven Pillars portraits – for example describing that of Sir Henry McMahon as 'absolutely splendid: the strength of it, and the life: it feels as though at any moment there might be a crash in the paper and the thing start out', and that of Captain Robin Buxton as 'astonishing . . . A wonderful drawing' – and Roberts went on to produce other illustrations for the book, notably Camel March, mentioned above, and 29 tailpiece drawings.
Several of the tailpiece drawings are now in the Houghton Library at Harvard University, along with studies for them and others that were eventually not used, and some of the studies offer a fairly rare chance to see Roberts's very early ideas for a picture, before the familiar stage of a meticulous pencil study squared up for development as a watercolour and in some cases as an oil too.
The room in Earl's Court in which the portrait of Lawrence was painted was rented from the wood-engraver William McCance, copies of whose correspondence with WR about a bounced cheque for the rent are in the Tate archive.
Also in the Tate archive is a curious note by Roberts's son, John:
My father had a proof copy of 'Seven Pillars' with the annotations of Lawrence, who passed it to him by sections, as finished with so that he could design tailpieces. Later WR had a note from the Foreign Office about it, and he went down and waited in a corridor with it. Someone came out and examined it, but said it was of little value. Sarah took it to [book dealer Bertram] Rota, who gave her £20. 'We had to have the money.' But WR was not trying to sell it to the FO.
The FO's interest in the proofs may have been just bibliographic, but it is known that there was some official unease about Lawrence after he denounced what he saw as Britain's eventual betrayal of the Arab cause.
Lawrence knew that the Robertses had no money, and was kind enough to offer Clouds Hill to them for summer holidays. He would look in from time to time to see how they were getting on. They were probably too polite to complain about the sanitation, which consisted of a bucket, the contents of which the guest was expected to dispose of around the four acres that went with the property. Another note by John in the Tate archive states, 'Our last stay took many weeks of a fine summer . . . WR dug a latrine, army fashion, up the hill among the rhododendrons. I have wondered since whether L. approved.'
WR in the Tate archive
Shortly before Christmas 2010, David Cleall and Bob Davenport visited the Tate archive to look at its material relating to WR and to his patron Ernest Cooper. A more detailed description of this material is available here, but these are some of the things they saw.
A number of letters or copies of letters brought home the financial uncertainty which Roberts experienced for much of his career. In 1919 he wrote to his former Slade professor Henry Tonks asking for help in getting commissions or selling work as he was 'almost driven to despair'. (Tonks sent him £5.) In a 1925 letter to an ex-landlord about a problem cheque WR declared that 'the financial position is such that I feel proud when I am able to produce the cash for the next days [sic ] meals.' In 1938, when Hugh Walpole had bought a drawing, WR wrote asking for commissions or the purchase of other work as he had sold little at his recent (Lefevre Gallery) exhibition. And as late as 1960 Kenneth Clark was writing to the Robertses' friend Victoria Kingsley in response to an enquiry about the possibility of WR receiving an official pension to alleviate his need.
Three pages from a small sketchbook contain preliminary red and black chalk sketches which appear to relate to Munitions Factory 1940. A pencil study for The German Prisoner (c.1931) is squared for transfer.
It had been thought that relations between Roberts and Cooper had deteriorated from the late 1950s, when Cooper's patronage ceased. However, later correspondence in the archive seemed friendly, and Cooper apparently continued with some financial support. (But, after a later quarrel with John and Sarah Roberts, he asked John, 'How many more olive branches do I have to lay at your feet?')
Press cuttings include the heated 1957/8 correspondence in The Times Literary Supplement following a review of the first of WR's Vortex Pamphlets, and also an interesting 1957 New Statesman review in which David Sylvester praised Roberts at the expense of Wyndham Lewis.
Less enthusiastic about WR's work was a customer of Cooper's health-food store who received (and returned) a 1954 calendar which made use of WR's illustration for the booklet Bread: The Whole-Wheat Way to Health. 'How', she asked, 'can you think this is a good advertisement for Vegetarianism or Food Reform? Surely one of the ideas connected with Vegetarianism is the purity of the physical body so that it is refined to a beautiful & expressive vehicle for the mind & spirit. No meat-eaters could outdo the coarseness & crudeness of these morons & half-wits depicted on the Calendar, with not an ounce of intelligence, spirit or beauty in their faces, & their only expression one of slyness.' Cooper replied hoping that his correspondent had obtained the purity of body which she extolled, and expressing his confidence that others would recognise WR's talent even if she did not.
The artist's models
William Roberts painted or drew a number of distinguished people – T. E. Lawrence, Maynard Keynes and Lydia Lopokova, various generals and officials – but in the list of his works there are several pictures known only by a single name in past exhibition catalogues: Elsie, Fred and Kit (all exhibited in 1923), Deirdre (1931) and (only recently known to us through a 1935 review in The Times) Helen.
Fred, 1920–23
© The Estate of John David Roberts
The catalogue of WR's 1965 retrospective identified 'Kit' as 'Kate Knewstub, a niece of John Chenil of the Chenil Galleries'. Following this up identified her more accurately as Katie Knewstub, later Katie Bissett-Smith, the daughter of Frederick Oliver Knewstub – whose brother John founded the Chenil Galleries, where in 1923 Roberts had his first one-man show – and Fred as the elder of her two brothers.
Katie (1907–2008) and Fred (1909–2001) lived with John Knewstub and his wife, Helen, after their mother died in 1915, their father having died the previous year. Two of John Knewstub's daughters were named Helen (later Lady Helen Brook, founder of the Brook Advisory Centres, whose husband, Sir Robin Brook, Roberts painted much later) and Deirdre, and it seems probable that these also sat for Roberts. And correspondence between Roberts's son, John, and York City Art Gallery suggests that the Portrait of a Young Woman in York shows a farmer's daughter called Elsie, who helped look after the young Deirdre Knewstub at John Knewstub's house at Pett Level in Sussex.
Another mysterious picture was Portrait of Daphne (painted 1942–3), until Pauline Paucker, our chairman, identified the sitter as Daphne Dennison, whom Pauline had met a few times through Roberts's wife, Sarah. Of Jamaican origin, Daphne was a student at the Slade School of Art during its Second World War evacuation to Oxford, and was a friend of John Roberts during the family's time in Oxford. She was the model for Venus in The Birth of Venus 1954. An exhibition of her paintings was held at the Commonwealth Art Gallery, London, in 1973.
Our thanks to Christopher Pearson of the Orpen Research Project, David Knewstub in Australia and Nikki Knewstub in London, and Laura Turner in York for help and information. Kit is in Wolverhampton Art Gallery and it seems that Elsie is probably in York, but we would be grateful for any information on the current whereabouts of the other pictures mentioned. Contact us at
A 'new' portrait by WR
We were delighted to be contacted in early 2009 by Dr Kumari Jayawardena, who owns portraits by WR of both her father, Dr A. P. de Zoysa, and of herself, painted when she was fifteen years old. The latter picture was previously unknown to us.
Dr Paul de Zoysa, c.1931
© The Estate of John David Roberts
A. P. de Zoysa (1890–1968) was born in Randombe, near Ambalangoda, in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). In 1921 he went to Britain to further his education, and at the Buddhist mission in London he met Eleanor Hutton, whom he married in 1929; the witnesses at Hampstead Register Office were William and Sarah Roberts. Eleanor's sister Doris – associate editor of Drama, a small magazine devoted to the theatre – was the fiancée of WR's brother Michael, through whom de Zoysa had met Roberts, whose A Talk about Buddha presumably records a social occasion with him. Eleanor de Zoysa later claimed that Roberts liked painting people with darker skin, and – as in the portraits of both her husband and her daughter – tended to depict them as darker than they really were. Roberts paid her husband 2s. 6d. to sit for a portrait. Having obtained an external London degree, been called to the Bar at Gray's Inn, and obtained a PhD in anthropology at London University (his supervisor being Bronislaw Malinowski), in 1934 de Zoysa returned to Ceylon, where he practised law and was politically active. He also acquired a small printing press, and published his own English–Sinhala Dictionary and a major translation into Sinhala of the Tripitaka canon of Buddhist scriptures. In March 2009 a stamp commemorating his life as a social reformer and Buddhist scholar was issued in Sri Lanka. For more information click here.
Kumari de Zoysa, 1946
© The Estate of John David Roberts
In 1946 Kumari de Zoysa and her mother, Eleanor, were in the UK to see Eleanor's mother and sisters after the war; they stayed with Eleanor's sister Eva in Golders Green, and went to visit the Robertses in Oxford, where in the course of five sittings totalling 17 hours on 7–26 July WR painted Kumari's portrait. She comments, ' I must have had it dinned into me that Bobby was a great artist and it was an honour to be painted by him. Otherwise I can't imagine sitting still so long! Also I hadn't reached the age of rebellion, so I obeyed orders.' She was in the midst of school exams and 'I would have been studying while sitting,' she says, 'but I remember being bored. According to my diary, Sarah used to compensate by taking me on trips and boating in Oxford. The last time I sat I travelled alone to Oxford.' During the sittings, 'WR didn't say a word if I remember right. Except "Raise your hand." He was trying various poses with my arm and hand. I was not prevented from talking, but knew better than to chatter. The Robertses were friends from my childhood, and I knew Bobby was not into small talk. He made drawings first and my mother wanted to have one, but I don't think he agreed.'
She noted in her diary that 'a Ceylonese artist named J. D. A. Perea visiting London came to see us in London to see the Roberts portrait.' She now recalls, 'We seem to have seen Sarah in London very frequently that year. I think Roberts only spoke to my father, and not very much except in monosyllables to my mother. This is only a vague memory. John was more talkative.'
She later graduated in political science from the London School of Economics, and then qualified as a barrister from Lincoln's Inn. After further studies in Paris and London, she taught at the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka and at the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, and was an affiliated fellow of the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass. Under her married name of Kumari Jayawardena, she is the author of several books, including the widely used text Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (1986).
WR works to go to the Tate
The society is delighted to be able to announce that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has informed us that the 'pre-eminent' works by William Roberts owned by WR's son John when he died intestate are to be allocated to the Tate to settle the inheritance-tax liability on the estate of WR's wife, Sarah (who left all her estate to John), and that the remainder of the works, at present administered by the Treasury Solicitor, will remain the property of the Crown (as John Roberts left no heirs) but will be kept together with the rest.
The DCMS website announced it thus:
William Roberts Archive: Roberts (1895–1980) was a major figure in modern British Art, and a key member of the Vorticist group. As an official war artist he recorded the front-line battles of the First World War, and he portrayed the working lives and leisure pursuits of ordinary, modern British families over nearly half a century. His archive comprises 117 works on paper, including pen and ink, chalk, charcoal, pencil and watercolour. Acceptance of the archive settled £223,221 of tax. It has been allocated to Tate, where it will complement the gallery's existing holding of Roberts' work, and will provide an important resource for the study of British 20th century art. This is the first time these works are available for public view.
A letter from the DCMs to the society confirmed that
All the other artistic material in the estate has been placed by Treasury Solicitor on long term loan to Tate so that the material remains united. The intention is that, should no heirs come forward in the 25 year period following the death of John Roberts, the material on loan would eventually be given to Tate.
This result has been a long time coming – Margaret Hodge, the minister, described the features of the case as 'probably unique and extremely complex' – but in that it leaves the Robertses' collection intact it is exactly what the society has been arguing for since its inception. It is to be hoped that the Treasury Solicitor and the Tate will be able to reach an early agreement on how this important body of work will be made available to the general public and particularly to students.
The Tate's selection is now listed on its website.
Richard Cork on William Roberts
David Cleall writes :
Following the brief formalities of the society's AGM, on 27 October Richard Cork delivered the 2007 William Roberts annual lecture, entitled 'William Roberts: Slade, Vortex and Trauma in the Great War'. By way of introduction, Cork recounted his unsuccessful attempts to interview William Roberts in the early 1970s, when researching his book Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age and the accompanying Hayward Gallery exhibition. It had been frustrating to be unable to interview the sole survivor of the Vorticist group, and he drew a connection between the powerfully determined stare of the young Roberts in the Self-portrait of 1910 and Roberts's stubbornness in later life.
Richard Cork was sure that during William Roberts's time at the Slade, and in the period immediately following it, he had been influenced by the Post-Impressionism and Futurist exhibitions in London in 1910 and 1912. Using a slide of a beautifully coloured watercolour of this period, Ring of Roses, Cork demonstrated the influence of Matisse in its subject matter, composition and fluidity of style. And he spoke with enthusiasm and passion about the bold experimental and abstract work that was to follow. It was a 'tragic loss' that a number of the large canvases that Roberts exhibited at this time have not survived. In some cases we have no record of the pictures at all and in other cases we only have records of preparatory sketches. The watercolour Two-step , with its bold abstract approach to its Jazz Age subject, gives us some idea of his concerns, as do The Return of Ulysses and the extraordinary depiction of a party at Stewart Gray's artists' commune in Ormonde Terrace known as The Toe Dancer. Cork encouraged the audience to request a viewing of the latter work in the Victoria & Albert Museum, as it is very impressive in both scale and concept.
Moving from the Blast war issue in 1916, and the Great War itself, to the commissions that followed the war, Cork described the work that was largely produced in 1918–19 as being subversive rather than straightforwardly propagandist. He explained that a lot of the war artists' commissions were conceived on a huge scale and were planned to make a spectacular permanent exhibition in a specially designed remembrance hall, with John Singer Sargent's Gassed as the centrepiece. Richard Cork regretted that the project was not realised and that there were few opportunities now to see these important artworks. The Imperial War Museum has very limited space for its art exhibitions, and the impact of Gassed is limited by the confined space in the gallery that currently houses the picture. William Roberts' First German Gas Attack at Ypres is an extremely powerful example of an important and ambitious war commission that has been exhibited in this country only once since it was painted in 1919. A smaller and sombre black crayon drawing, Burying the Dead After a Battle (1919) was singled out by Cork as 'one of the most powerful depictions of grief throughout all war art'.
Burying the Dead After a Battle, 1919
© The Estate of John David Roberts
In considering the post-war period, Richard Cork felt that the trauma experienced by Roberts could be seen in his non-war subjects. Using the examples of The Dancers (1919) and The Cinema (1920) he felt that the dancers could almost be fighting, and in both works the facial expressions of the people have a schematic and grotesque appearance that conveys trauma.
Throughout the lecture Richard Cork's passion for his subject was evident, and the confident and easy-going way in which he facilitated discussion on William Roberts in the question-and-answer session was appreciated by all.
The afternoon was rounded off by the witty and brilliant film Blast!, which was directed by Murray Grigor with the close involvement of Richard Cork in 1975.
Marion Hutton adds:
Yes, it was a most successful occasion with a good audience. We appreciated the support of friends from the Wyndham Lewis Society and from Pallant House Gallery. I was amused when my sister reported a conversation which she overheard at the end of the afternoon. A non-member praised the occasion. Her male friend, a member, concurred: 'Yes, these old girls do an excellent job.' Our apologies to David, Michael, Arno and Bob!
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 hearing_eye@torriano.org.
[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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