William Roberts (painter)
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William Patrick Roberts (5 June 1895 – 20 January 1980) was a British artist. In the years before the
First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
Roberts was a pioneer, among English artists, in his use of abstract images. In later years he described his approach as that of an "English Cubist". In the First World War he served as a gunner on the
Western Front Western Front or West Front may refer to: Military frontiers * Western Front (World War I), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (World War II), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (Russian Empire), a maj ...
, and in 1918 became an official war artist. Roberts's first one-man show was at the
Chenil Gallery The Chenil Gallery (often referred to as the Chenil Galleries, or New Chenil Galleries) was a British art gallery and sometime-music studio in Chelsea, London between 1905 and 1927, and later the location of various businesses referencing this ear ...
in London in 1923, and a number of his paintings from the twenties were purchased by the
Contemporary Art Society The Contemporary Art Society (CAS) is an independent charity that champions the collecting of outstanding contemporary art and craft for UK museum collections. Since its founding in 1910 the organisation has donated over 10,000 works to museums ...
for provincial galleries in the UK. In the 1930s it could be argued that Roberts was artistically at the top of his game; but, although his work was exhibited regularly in London and, increasingly, internationally, he always struggled financially. This situation became worse during the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
– although Roberts did carry out some commissions as a war artist. Roberts is probably best remembered for the large, complex and colourful compositions that he exhibited annually at the
Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...
summer exhibition from the 1950s until his death. He had a major retrospective at the
Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
in 1965, and was elected a full member of the Royal Academy in 1966. There has recently been a revival of interest in the work of this artist who always worked outside the mainstream.


Early years

Roberts was born into a working-class family in London's
East End The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have uni ...
on 5 June 1895. The family were then living at 44 Blackstone Road in Hackney, and his father was a carpenter; they later moved to 4 Blanchard Road (by October 1898) and 20 London Fields West Side (by April 1911) nearby. From an early age Roberts showed an outstanding talent for drawing, and this was encouraged by his parents and by his school teachers. He left school at the age of 14 and took up an apprenticeship with the advertising firm of Sir Joseph Causton Ltd, intending to become a poster designer. He attended evening classes at
Saint Martin's School of Art Saint Martin's School of Art was an art college in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1854, initially under the aegis of the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Saint Martin's became part of ...
in London and won a
London County Council London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kn ...
scholarship to the
Slade School of Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...
– freeing him from the obligations of his apprenticeship. He joined the Slade in 1911, studying under
Henry Tonks Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher. He was one of the first British arti ...
and Wilson Steer. His contemporaries at the Slade included a number of brilliant young students, among them
Dora Carrington Dora de Houghton Carrington (29 March 1893 – 11 March 1932), known generally as Carrington, was an English painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton ...
, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash,
Christopher Nevinson Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (13 August 1889 – 7 October 1946) was an English figure and landscape painter, etcher and lithographer, who was one of the most famous war artists of World War I. He is often referred to by his initial ...
,
Stanley Spencer Sir Stanley Spencer, CBE RA (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959) was an English painter. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the small ...
,
David Bomberg David Garshen Bomberg (5 December 1890 – 19 August 1957) was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys. Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry ...
and
Bernard Meninsky Bernard Meninsky (25 July 1891–12 February 1950) was a painter of figures and landscapes in oils, watercolour and gouache, a draughtsman and a teacher.. Biography Early life and education Meninsky was born in Konotop, Ukraine, where his fathe ...
. The Slade's emphasis on the importance of drawing and sound structuring of composition would inform Roberts's later work. In 1912 he won the Slade's Melville Nettleship prize for Figure Composition.


An English Cubist

Roberts was intrigued by
Post-Impressionism Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...
and
Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
, an interest fuelled by his friendships at the Slade (in particular with Bomberg) as well as by his travels in France and Italy after leaving the Slade in 1913. Later in 1913 he joined Roger Fry's Omega Workshops for three mornings a week. The ten shillings a time that Omega paid enabled him to create challenging Cubist-style paintings such as ''The Return of Ulysses'' (now owned by the Castle Museum and Art Gallery in Nottingham). After leaving Omega he was taken up by
Wyndham Lewis Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited ''BLAST,'' the literary magazine of the Vorticists. His novels include ''Tarr'' ( ...
, who was forming a British alternative to
Futurism Futurism ( it, Futurismo, link=no) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such ...
.
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
had suggested the name
Vorticism Vorticism was a London-based Modernism, modernist art movement formed in 1914 by the writer and artist Wyndham Lewis. The movement was partially inspired by Cubism and was introduced to the public by means of the publication of the Vorticist mani ...
, and Roberts's work was featured in both editions of the Vorticist literary magazine ''
BLAST Blast or The Blast may refer to: * Explosion, a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner *Detonation, an exothermic front accelerating through a medium that eventually drives a shock front Film * ''Blast'' (1997 film) ...
''. Roberts was a signatory to the Vorticist Manifesto that appeared in the first edition of the magazine. Roberts himself preferred the description "Cubist" for his work of this period. Two large-scale oil paintings exhibited in the 1917 Penguin Club Vorticist exhibition in New York, and purchased by John Quinn, were subsequently lost, but the radical nature of Roberts's "Cubist style" is evidenced by ''The Toe Dancer'' (owned by the
Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
) and the recently rediscovered ''Boxers'' – both exhibited with the London Group in 1915.


First World War

In 1916 Roberts enlisted in the
Royal Regiment of Artillery The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises t ...
as a gunner, serving on the Western Front in the Ypres sector, north of the Menin Road and at Arras. Having been on active service for the best part of two years, he successfully applied to the Canadian War Records Office for a commission to paint a large-scale war subject. In April 1918 he returned to London as an official war artist, with the proviso that the work should not be in the Cubist style. The outcome of the commission was ''The First German Gas Attack at Ypres'', a powerful expressionist work that is on permanent display in the
Canadian War Museum The Canadian War Museum (french: link=no, Musée canadien de la guerre; CWM) is a national museum on the country's military history in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The museum serves as both an educational facility on Canadian military history, in a ...
in Ottawa. Roberts was subsequently commissioned by the British Ministry of Information, for whom he painted ''A Shell Dump, France'' (1918–19), now in the
Imperial War Museum Imperial War Museums (IWM) is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military ...
collection along with twelve watercolour drawings of his experiences at the front They rival the bitterness and social realism of the German artists
Otto Dix Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with Geor ...
and
George Grosz George Grosz (; born Georg Ehrenfried Groß; July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objec ...
. In 1978 Roberts published a memoir of his experiences at the front – ''4.5 Howitzer Gunner RFA: Memories of the War to End War 1914–1918''.


1920s

Roberts had met Sarah Kramer (1900–92) in 1915 through her brother
Jacob Kramer Jacob Kramer (26 December 1892 – 4 February 1962)''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' was a Russian Empire-born painter who spent all of his working life in England. Early life Jacob Kramer was born in the small town of Klintsy, then ...
, who also had studied at the Slade. Roberts had been writing to Sarah from the front, and shortly after the war was over they set up home together and had a son, John David Roberts (1919–95). They moved into rented rooms in
Fitzrovia Fitzrovia () is a district of central London, England, near the West End. The eastern part of area is in the London Borough of Camden, and the western in the City of Westminster. It has its roots in the Manor of Tottenham Court, and was urban ...
and were married in 1922. Roberts exhibited with
Wyndham Lewis Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited ''BLAST,'' the literary magazine of the Vorticists. His novels include ''Tarr'' ( ...
's Group X, and
Osbert Sitwell Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet CH CBE (6 December 1892 – 4 May 1969) was an English writer. His elder sister was Edith Sitwell and his younger brother was Sacheverell Sitwell. Like them, he devoted his life to art and li ...
was an early patron. Alongside his dramatic Cubist work, Roberts was a talented portrait painter. He honed his skills with portraits of Sarah – she would be his model and muse for the next 60 years. In 1923, while Roberts was preparing for a one-man show at the Chenil Gallery, Chelsea, the artist
Colin Gill Colin Unwin Gill (12 May 1892 – 16 November 1940) was an English artist who painted murals and portraits and is most notable for the work he produced as a war artist during the First World War. Biography Early life Colin Gill was born at ...
put Roberts in touch with
T. E. Lawrence Thomas Edward Lawrence (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918) and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign (1915–1918 ...
, who commissioned a series of portraits for his book ''
Seven Pillars of Wisdom ''Seven Pillars of Wisdom'' is the autobiographical account of the experiences of British Army Colonel T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), of serving as a military advisor to Bedouin forces during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire ...
''. Finally shaking off his association with Wyndham Lewis, Roberts had evolved a unique and highly recognisable 'English Cubist' style. His subject matter turned to urban life in London with paintings such as ''Bank Holiday in the Park'' and ''At the Hippodrome'', which were exhibited with the
London Group The London Group is a society based in London, England, created to offer additional exhibiting opportunities to artists besides the Royal Academy of Arts. Formed in 1913, it is one of the oldest artist-led organisations in the world. It was form ...
, and ''The Cinema'' – later acquired by the Tate Gallery. At this stage his oeuvre was quite broad, including scenes from 'Greek Mythology ndChristian Mythology', as he put it. Lawrence commissioned further illustrations and decorations for ''Seven Pillars of Wisdom'', and there were also commissions of literary portraits and cover designs for private presses – such as a portrait of
H. E. Bates Herbert Ernest Bates (16 May 1905 – 29 January 1974), better known as H. E. Bates, was an English writer. His best-known works include ''Love for Lydia'', '' The Darling Buds of May'', and '' My Uncle Silas''. Early life H.E. Bates was ...
for the ''New Coterie'' magazine in 1927. It was the purchase of a number of his paintings by the Contemporary Art Society for major provincial art galleries that kept Roberts financially afloat. He supplemented his income by teaching a life class with Bernard Meninsky at the
Central School of Art The Central School of Art and Design was a public school of fine and applied arts in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1896 by the London County Council as the Central School of Arts and Cra ...
for one day a week from 1925 – a post he held until 1960. Towards the end of the twenties his work became less down-beat. For example, ''The Tea Garden'' (1928) and ''The Chess Players'' (1929) provide a light take on social interaction and were perfectly in tune with the fashionable
Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
style.


1930s

In the 1930s the angular style of Roberts's earlier work was replaced by a rounder, more sculptural approach. This change in style is, for example, apparent in the double portrait of
John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...
and
Lydia Lopokova Lydia Lopokova, Baroness Keynes (born Lidia Vasilyevna Lopukhova, russian: Лидия Васильевна Лопухова; 21 October 1891 – 8 June 1981) was a Russian ballerina famous during the early 20th century. Lopokova trained at the ...
in the
National Portrait Gallery, London The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it ...
. Keynes became an important patron of Roberts through the London Artists' Association, and the paintings that Keynes purchased are now in the collection of
King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...
. While Roberts was critical of the financial support that he received from the London Artists' Association, it is difficult to imagine how the family would have survived without this patronage. Later he would describe the thirties as "the years of economic struggle". A number of striking large-scale canvases were undertaken in the early thirties, such as ''The Masks'' (1934) and ''The Playground (The Gutter)'' (1934–5), both works being exhibited at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, and in New York. Despite their financial position the family occasionally took holidays: they travelled to Spain for the first time in the early 1930s and went on a cycling holiday to Brighton that apparently inspired ''Les Routiers''. Andrew Heard suggests that Roberts may have used a French title for this work as a nod towards the work of
Fernand Léger Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painting, painter, sculpture, sculptor, and film director, filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually ...
, whose "tubist" forms have some similarity to Roberts's figures.


1940s

Soon after the Second World War broke out, in September 1939 William and Sarah left London for Oxford. Roberts was too old for combat service, but enquired about the possibility of getting 'some pictorial propaganda work to do'. He was frustrated at being offered only minor assignments for the
War Artists' Advisory Committee The War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), was a British government agency established within the Ministry of Information at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and headed by Sir Kenneth Clark. Its aim was to compile a comprehensive artist ...
. However, he did complete two commissions documenting life on the home front – ''Munitions Factory'' (1940) and ''The Control Room, Civil Defence Headquarters''(1942) – both now in
Salford Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...
Art Gallery. William and Sarah eventually spent most of the war years in a flat in Marston on the outskirts of Oxford. Roberts managed to get a one-day-a-week teaching job at Oxford Technical College. Throughout his life he drew inspiration from his surroundings, and a number of watercolour drawings from this period show rural scenes on the River Cherwell and a nearby Gypsy camp. In 1946 he and Sarah returned to London and took a room at 14 St Mark's Crescent, a house in multiple occupancy backing on to the Regent's Canal, near
Primrose Hill Primrose Hill is a Grade II listed public park located north of Regent's Park in London, England, first opened to the public in 1842.Mills, A., ''Dictionary of London Place Names'', (2001) It was named after the natural hill in the centre of ...
. When other tenants moved out the Robertses took over additional rooms, and eventually, with financial help from a friend of Sarah's, they were able to buy the whole house. This house remained their home for the rest of their lives and the neighbourhood would provide Roberts with subject matter. The Roberts's son, John, joined them. He had studied physics at University College London, and became a poet and guitar scholar. In 1948 Roberts showed work at the Royal Academy summer exhibition for the first time – a self-portrait and a portrait of Sarah in a headscarf as ''The Gypsy'' – and he would show work there in every subsequent year until his death.


The Royal Academy and the "Vortex Pamphlets"

In the 1950s, when cutting-edge British art was abstract, Roberts's work was in danger of seeming out of date. Roberts re-evaluated the Royal Academy as an exhibiting opportunity, as it attracted large and diverse crowds that were generally more interested in representational art than in abstraction, as well as press coverage. From this point on Roberts's annual contribution became increasingly sensational – spectacular in scale, in use of colour and in dramatic subject matter. ''The Temptation of St Anthony'' (1951), ''Revolt in the Desert'' (1952) and ''The Birth of Venus'' (1954) dominated the walls of the RA and were a talking point in the press and with the public. Roberts now had a new patron – Ernest Cooper, who ran a chain of health-food shops under the banner of the ''London Health Centre''. As well as purchasing a large number of these Royal Academy paintings, Cooper commissioned Roberts to design illustrations for his mail-order catalogues and instructional pamphlets. In 1956 the Tate Gallery held an exhibition entitled ''Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism'', with 150 works by Lewis and a small selection by other artists to give "an indication of the effect of his immediate impact upon his contemporaries". Roberts was offended that the catalogue "would lead the uninitiated to suppose that the artists designated as 'Other Vorticists' are in some way subservient to Lewis", and published a series of "Vortex Pamphlets", in which he railed against the exhibition, the catalogue, the press coverage and the account of his own career contained in ''Modern English Painters'' by the Tate's director,
John Rothenstein Sir John Knewstub Maurice Rothenstein (11 July 1901 – 27 February 1992) was a British arts administrator and art historian. Biography John Rothenstein was born in London in 1901, the son of Sir William Rothenstein. The family was connec ...
, which appeared at about the same time. Targets of earlier visual satires had included
Walter Sickert Walter Richard Sickert (31 May 1860 – 22 January 1942) was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group of Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on d ...
and
Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developme ...
. To publicise his own work he also published ''Some Early Abstract and Cubist Work 1913–1920'' (London, 1957), the first of a series of collections of reproductions of his paintings, with somewhat polemical prefaces.


Late recognition

In 1958 Roberts was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, and two years later, when he turned 65, he retired from his one-day-a-week teaching position at the Central School. However, his output as an artist over the next fifteen years remained prolific. In 1961 he was given an award by the
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation ( pt, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian), commonly referred to simply as the Gulbenkian Foundation, is a Portuguese institution dedicated to the promotion of the arts, philanthropy, science, and education. One o ...
"in recognition of his artistic achievement and his outstanding service to British painting". In that same year he began painting ''
The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, Spring 1915 ''The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, Spring 1915'' is a 1961–1962 painting by the English artist William Roberts. It depicts the Vorticist group gathered at a French restaurant in London. Description The painting shows a crow ...
'' (completed 1962; now in the Tate Gallery), a nostalgic recollection of a boisterous Vorticist gathering in 1915 that can be read as an attempt by Roberts to build bridges following the "Vortex Pamphlets" debacle. A major retrospective of his work, organised by the
Arts Council of Great Britain The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. It was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England (now Arts Council England), the Scottish Arts Council (l ...
and curated by Ronald Alley, opened at the Tate Gallery in 1965, and a smaller version was also shown in
Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...
and
Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
. In the same year Roberts was offered, but rejected, an OBE. He was, however, pleased to be elected a full member of the Royal Academy in 1966.. While still tackling a variety of subjects, Roberts became somewhat obsessed with the self-portrait, and a number of his self-portraits would be exhibited by the National Portrait Gallery in 1984. Roberts was often described as reclusive, and he was very wary about interviewers – especially after an ''
Observer An observer is one who engages in observation or in watching an experiment. Observer may also refer to: Computer science and information theory * In information theory, any system which receives information from an object * State observer in co ...
'' journalist who visited him produced an article that Roberts felt was concerned more with his rather spartan lifestyle than with his work. "What kind of art critic is this, who sets out to criticise my pictures, but criticises my gas stove and kitchen table instead?" he asked. In 1974 the Arts Council exhibition "Vorticism and Its Allies", curated by
Richard Cork Richard Cork (born 25 March 1947) is a British art historian, editor, critic, broadcaster and exhibition curator. He has been an art critic for the ''Evening Standard'', '' The Listener'', ''The Times'' and the ''New Statesman''. Cork was also ...
, recognised Roberts's important role within the group; however, when Cork approached him for an interview Roberts was uncooperative. Unsurprisingly, in his eighties Roberts's draughtsmanship deteriorated, but he continued working until the end – ''Donkey Rides'' was "pinned to his drawing board on the day on which he died 0 Jan. 1980.


The fate of his estate

Sarah Roberts died in 1992 and her and William's son, John, died two and a half years later, intestate. John had set up the family house, 14 St Mark's Crescent, as a "house museum" with a changing selection of his father's paintings on show to friends. It was estimated that there were almost 475 paintings and drawings in the house at the time of his death, and the Tate Gallery agreed to store them for safe keeping. The fate of these works was of concern when ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' in 2004 revealed that the
Treasury Solicitor The Government Legal Department (previously called the Treasury Solicitor's Department) is the largest in-house legal organisation in the United Kingdom's Government Legal Service. The department is headed by the Treasury Solicitor. This office go ...
, who had control of John's estate, refused to lend to the major Roberts retrospective, curated by Andrew Heard, at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne and the
Graves Art Gallery Graves Art Gallery is an art gallery in Sheffield, England. The gallery is located above the Central Library in Sheffield city centre. It houses permanent displays from the city’s historic and contemporary collection of British and European ar ...
in Sheffield. Since then the collection has been saved, with 117 of these works having been allocated to the Tate in lieu of inheritance tax, and the Tate continuing to house the remainder until the period when claims may be made on the estate has expired, when they too will enter the Tate collection. A number of the drawings allocated to the Tate went on display at Tate Britain in 2012–13. In 2004 ''William Roberts: An English Cubist'' by Andrew Gibbon Williams, the standard monograph on this painter, was published. Between 1998 and 2015 the William Roberts Society furthered the appreciation and promotion of Roberts's work, being established as a
registered charity A charitable organization or charity is an organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being (e.g. educational, religious or other activities serving the public interest or common good). The legal definition of a ch ...
in 2002 and publishing regular newsletters and occasional pamphlets. English Heritage unveiled a
blue plaque A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term i ...
at 14 St Mark's Crescent in 2003. A short film ''William Roberts: An Artist's House'' is accessible on YouTube. In 2007
Pallant House Gallery Pallant House Gallery is an art gallery in Chichester, West Sussex, England. It houses one of the best collections of 20th-century British art in the world. History The Gallery's collection is founded on works left to the city of Chichester by ...
staged an exhibition ''William Roberts: England at Play'', curated by Simon Martin. The sale of the Evill/Frost collection at
Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...
in London in 2011 saw unprecedentedly high prices for Roberts's work, and in the following year ''The Chess Players'' (1929–30)''The Chess Players'', 1929–30
/ref> was sold for over £1 million, also at Sotheby's.


References


Further reading

*Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2003) ''The Tortoise and the Hare - Jacob Kramer & William Roberts''


External links

*
Works by Roberts in the Tate collection

Works by Roberts in the Imperial War Museum

An English Cubist: William Roberts, 1895–1980
including a catalogue raisonné, texts of Roberts's writings, a bibliography, and reproductions of his works

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roberts, William 1895 births 1980 deaths 20th-century English painters 20th-century English male artists Alumni of Saint Martin's School of Art Artists from London British Army personnel of World War I British war artists English male painters Group X People from Hackney Central Royal Academicians Royal Artillery soldiers Vorticists World War I artists World War II artists