WILLIAM ROBERTS SOCIETY

Newsletter, April 2015

Susanna and the Elders c.1926 (detail) – a painting exhibited in WR’s 1965 retrospective – discussed on pages 7–12 – but not since then

WRS farewell beano … The William Roberts Society, 1998–2015 … A WR for the BM … A new WR website … WR and the art of the First World War … The 1965 Roberts retrospective … WR on display … Tom Devonshire Jones WILLIAM ROBERTS SOCIETY

registered charity no. 1090538 Committee: Pauline Paucker (chairman), Marion Hutton (secretary: Lexden House,Tenby SA70 7BJ; 01834 843295; [email protected]),Arnold Paucker (treasurer), David Cleall (archivist), Bob Davenport (newsletter and website: [email protected]), Michael Mitzman (copyright), Ruth Artmonsky,Anne Goodchild,Agi Katz www.williamrobertssociety.co.uk

April 2015

WRS FAREWELL BEANO not so young when we elected our com- mittee are now rather old (Diana Gurney, The a.g.m. on 11 April ratified the com- one of our trustees and a founder mem- mittee’s decision, announced in a letter ber, died recently aged 97), and we all, with last October’s newsletter, that the younger and old, feel that we have society should be wound up. We thank achieved most of our original aims – bar members and friends for their valuable the house museum, so much wished for support over the years; now we look for- by Sarah and John Roberts. ward to raising a final glass together. We initiated the the application for the Please come to a closing-down beano – blue plaque on the Robertses’ house; we a gathering to celebrate the society’s have visited nearly all the holdings of achievements and the friendships forged Roberts’s work within hitting distance of – on Saturday 6 June from 2.30 to 5.00 London; we have led Roberts walks in p.m. at the Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Fitzrovia and Primrose Hill; we have Square, London WC1N 3AT. There will held a series of excellent yearly public be a short presentation. Canapés and lectures with distinguished speakers; and drinks will be served. RSVP Marion we were active in dissuading the Treas- Hutton via the contact details above. ury Solicitor from selling the works col- lected in the house at public auction. (These have since been given or prom- THE WILLIAM ROBERTS ised to the nation.) SOCIETY, 1998–2015 Marion Hutton began the series of by Pauline Paucker lively regular newsletters; Bob Daven- port set up an informative website; Our society, founded in 1998, is now David Cleall compiled a catalogue winding itself up. Some of us who were raisonné; we have administered the

– 1 – copyright of both Roberts and his brother-in-law, Jacob Kramer; prices for Roberts’s work have risen – and so have charges for affordable venues – it seems time to close down. Roberts’s son, John, having died intestate, Diana and I were told by Michael Mitzman, lawyer for the Robertses at solicitors Mishcon de Reya, to act as ‘friends of the family’, sorting out personal property in the house. The many paintings displayed or stacked there were our first concern. Diana immediately rang Nicholas Serota, who agreed to store them in the Tate depot, where they remained for many years unseen by the public, though we have been allowed to have access on more than one occasion. (Above) Self-portrait in a Blue Shirt It was at a meeting with Michael c.1955–6 and (right) Sarah in a Gold Lamé Mitzman, who was to become our faith- Hat c.1932 and John c.1932 – three of the Our inaugural a.g.m. and public lec- Roberts exhibition ‘England at Play’, ful support and adviser, that Marion works currently being held in the Tate depot ture was held in the Conway Hall, when curated by Simon Martin, in March brightly suggested that we should set up the late Andrew Causey was the first of 2007. A visit to Cambridge to see the an appreciation society. We then had gone but the highly individual fur- those who spoke to us on different work held by the Fitzwilliam and the approached friends of Sarah and John, nishings were still in place, and a profes- aspects of Roberts’s work – the full list is Roberts pictures bequeathed to King’s found relatives of Roberts, approached sional photographer also made a set of below. We have had different venues: the College by Maynard Keynes was unfor- owners of Roberts paintings and ad- photographs for English Heritage so that National Portrait Gallery for some years, gettable, and Woking’s Lightbox gallery mirers of his work, and a group of us met some record remains of how the family the Art Workers’ Guild, Toynbee Hall, too held surprises: it houses a fine collec- in the basement of Agi Katz’s Boundary lived and worked. David‘s video of the even the Swedenborg Society’s hall and tion of Roberts’s work. Road Gallery to found the William house with my voice-over has been Mishcon de Reya’s handsome premises. We have had visits to the print rooms Roberts Society one evening in Septem- available on YouTube since March 2011. Andrew Gibbon Williams came to us of the V&A, the British Museum and ber 1998. We provided the information required for help with his excellent biography, Tate Britain, visited the Imperial War We agreed then to contact English for the blue plaque, the unveiling of William Roberts: An English Cubist, Museum when Roberts’s work was on Heritage, who showed interest in the which by Alan Bennett in October 2003 which we launched with a party at Mish- show, made contact with owners of idea of a house museum, as did the attracted a large crowd. It now sits con de Reya’s. paintings as far away as Sri Lanka, and National Trust; but nothing came of it, together with two more plaques: com- We were closely involved with the walked the Regent’s Canal in pouring and 14 St Mark’s Crescent was eventual- memorating the poet Arthur Hugh setting up of the Roberts/Kramer exhib- rain to fix the sites of Roberts’s canal ly sold. We then concentrated on pro- Clough and the historian A. J. P. Taylor, ition ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ at paintings. One of our final acts has been moting our artist. a one-time neighbour of the Robertses, Leeds University and the Ben Uri the purchase of one of Roberts’s rare Before the sale I had taken many who wrote in praise of Roberts’s memoir Gallery in 2003, and it was exciting to etchings, presented to the British Mus- photographs of the interior; the paintings 4.5 Howitzer Gunner. visit Pallant House in Chichester for the eum in the name of the society

– 2 – – 3 – Bathers c.1925, the etching presented to the British Museum in the name of the William Roberts Society

A WR FOR THE BM A NEW WR WEBSITE

At a committee meeting last November With the society coming to an end and its it was decided to use some of the soci- copyright licence from the Treasury Apple Pickers 1936 – one of the works seen in the WRS visit to Cambridge in April 2011 ety’s remaining funds to purchase a Solicitor about to expire, the William work by Roberts for presentation to a Roberts Society website has been taken public collection in the society’s name. down. But David Cleall and Bob Daven- Our members have been enthusiastic Elizabeth Cayzer (2002), David Cleall The work eventually chosen was port have obtained permission for a and supportive throughout, and we owe (2008 and 2013), Richard Cork (2007), Bathers, one of the nine etchings that Roberts website of their own, and this is them much. We hope to see as many as Mark Glazebrook (2005), Frederick WR created and printed in very small now online at possible at our goodbye party in June, Gore (2000), David Boyd Haycock numbers c.1925. It has been donated to http://englishcubist.co.uk also celebrating the birthday of our artist, (2011), Andrew Heard (2004), Tom the British Museum, which has two of They also intend to send out occasion- William Roberts. Lubbock (2009), James Malpas (2001), the other etchings and a study for a third, al emails with news about Roberts; if Simon Martin (2012), Richard Slo- and where anyone can visit the print you would like to receive these, please William Roberts lecturers: David Buck- combe (2015), Timothy Wilcox (2006), room to see it without appointment (but email ‘Subscribe’ to man (2010), Andrew Causey (1999), Andrew Gibbon Williams (2003). with identification). [email protected]

– 4 – – 5 – WILLIAM ROBERTS AND Fund, he was warned that ‘Cubist’ THE ART OF THE FIRST work was unacceptable, but in the WORLD WAR resulting The First German Gas Attack at Ypres (see the October 2014 The last of the William Roberts Soci- newsletter) he managed an adroit bal- ety’s annual lectures was given on 11 ancing act between this constraint and April by Richard Slocombe, senior art artistic expression. His subsequent curator at the , commission from the British War who spoke on William Roberts and Memorials Committee (BWMC) the art of the First World War, looking required him to hand over to the state at how Roberts and his modernist fel- all the work he created in a particular low artists responded to the war and period, and the collection of works also at the reaction to the art that now in the Imperial War Museum not resulted. only details his experience of and atti- Dr Slocombe described how a pre- tudes to the war, but also documents a war critical attitude to the modernist transition to a stylised figuration with aesthetic of Roberts and his fellow a strong satirical element. In The Gas Vorticists as ‘an unhealthy, foreign Chamber, for example, gas masks Signallers 1918 (© IWM (Art.IWM ART 1167)) (i.e. German) affliction’ intensified as transform soldiers into clumsy, robot- the war began, only to soften as the ic figures rendered almost blind and scale of the loss of young lives helpless by the equipment intended to became apparent – for modernism was protect them, and Signallers shows commissions in the post-war years. (also including pictures by Stanley something practised by the young. scant sign of team spirit among those Plans for a hall of remembrance to Spencer, John Nash and ) And when in March 1916 (the month supposed to be working together. house them were abandoned, and in given on long-term loan to the not par- before Roberts was called up) The view that war debased those January 1919 the paintings were given ticularly enthusiastic Tate Gallery, C. R. W. Nevinson’s painting of a who took part in it, reducing man to to the Imperial War Museum. The effectively decontextualising them as machine-gun post, La Mitrailleuse, an animal or even a mechanical status, committee had aimed to represent war art – although it seems that they was exhibited in London, presenting, found expression in Wyndham British artistic plurality and resist were hardly shown at all in the inter- with the authority of someone who Lewis’s (1919), domination by the Royal Academy, war period before they eventually had served at the front, a vision of commissioned by the BWMC, where with pictures being based on personal returned to the IWM in its new home humanity bent to the will of a the gunners under fire in the back- experience rather than reimagining in Lambeth. machine, critics had to concede that ground appear dehumanised, insect- episodes from the war. When exhibit- the colours and harsh angularity of like, scuttling for cover impelled by a ed at the RA late in 1919, however, the forms previously found disagreeable primitive instinct for survival. Dr Slo- modernist works of Lewis and THE 1965 ROBERTS were now qualities that gave powerful combe saw a similar point of view in Roberts were denounced as Bolshev- RETROSPECTIVE expression to a subject that demanded WR’s Tommies Filling Their Water ism in art, and the press outcry by David Cleall new forms of representation. Bottles with Rain from a Shell Hole prompted questions in Parliament When, after two years as a gunner (1918), in which soldiers scramble for about state expenditure on such Almost 50 years ago, in the winter of in the Royal Field Artillery, Roberts water from a dirty puddle. things. The IWM consequently dis- 1965, the Tate Gallery and the Arts was seconded to undertake a commis- Particularly interesting was the tanced itself from these pictures, and Council staged a major William Roberts sion for the Canadian War Memorials account of the fate of the BWMC in 1921 they were among 48 works retrospective exhibition. Norman Reid

– 6 – – 7 – had recently succeeded Sir John Rothen- catalogue raisonné of Bacon’s work in stein as director of the Tate, and in an 1964. Most important to an effective early staff reorganisation Ronald Alley working relationship with the Robertses became keeper of the modern collection. was Alley’s unpretentious and self- Alley had been with the Tate for a num- effacing manner. ber of years, and this promotion enabled Alley set to work tracking down the him to more effectively continue his key pieces in Roberts’s output. The two work in revitalising the modern collec- major private collections of the artist’s tion. work cooperated with him – Ernest William Roberts was now 70. In 1961 Cooper lent 15 oil paintings and 18 he had been given an award by the drawings, while Honor Frost, the execu- Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation ‘in tor of the late Wilfrid Evill (who had recognition of his artistic achievement died in 1963), lent 7 oil paintings and 7 and his outstanding service to British drawings. Other private collectors lent a painting’, and his earlier election as an further 45 pictures, including such rarely Associate of the Royal Academy had led seen and important works as Dock to various duties on the RA council. Gates, The Garden of Eden, Christ Driv- However, he was known mainly through ing the Money Changers from the Tem- the large-scale works exhibited each ple and Susanna and the Elders, and 68 year at the RA Summer Exhibition, and works came from national collections the extraordinary range of his work had (including the Tate). Most excitingly of not been recognised. Now a major retro- all, Alley brought the huge Canadian spective was planned, and Ronald Alley War Memorials commission The First Trafalgar Square 1926 – a painting exhibited in the 1965 retrospective but never since would curate it. German Gas Attack at Ypres across from Alley had championed Roberts in his Canada, The Chess Players from New role as purchase adviser to the Cecil Hig- Jersey, and Interval Before Round Ten gins Art Gallery in the late 1950s, and it from Australia. The Robertses lent 33 Ronald Alley contributed a concise public response documented – though is likely that a number of recent Tate works, including a 1909 Study of the introductory essay to a detailed, well- Edward Burra went in November and Gallery Roberts acquisitions – The Artist’s Father, Brother and Sister, por- illustrated catalogue. Roberts’s cover declared himself ‘fascinated by the Diners, Athletes Exercising in a Gymna- traits of Sarah, and self-portraits includ- illustration – a pen-and-ink drawing William Roberts exhibition at the Tate’. sium and The Vorticists at the Restaurant ing the recent self-mocking Self-portrait printed on lemon-yellow card – showed The art critics varied in their respons- de la Tour Eiffel – were also the result of With Knotted Handkerchief (1964) – an him looking back over three phases in es, though many of them provided his support. Roberts couldn’t have been indication that Roberts didn’t want to be his life: first the Slade, then his war detailed and thoughtful analyses of served by a better curator than Alley, seen as taking himself too seriously. A experiences, and finally Roberts the Roberts’s work and some were very wel- who was passionately enthusiastic about grand total of 222 items (212 plus 10 life ARA. coming of an opportunity to re-evaluate modern art and had close friendships studies) were exhibited at the Tate It is difficult to imagine that Roberts the artist. with many internationally recognised Gallery from 20 November, with a would not have been very satisfied with Andrew Forge in the New Statesman artists, including Jackson Pollock, Mark slightly smaller exhibition moving on to the show, although we have no record of (26 November 1965) declared that ‘The Rothko and Francis Bacon. He also had the Laing Gallery in Newcastle in Janu- his response other than that he was William Roberts exhibition which a reputation for the thoroughness and ary 1966 and finally to the Whitworth pleased by the space allocated and the Ronald Alley has arranged for the Arts accuracy of his research – completing a Art Gallery in Manchester. resulting uncramped hang. Nor is the Council at the Tate is a real event. It

– 8 – – 9 – confirms that Roberts is one of the most opinion in England have alternated unfairly neglected artists of our time. It between welcoming his work and for- also shows him to be a more complex getting it entirely … Mr. Roberts is real- and disturbing artist than we had ever ly a modernist in style but not in spirit.’ imagined.’ However, the critic singled out the David Thompson in The Spectator smaller, earlier pictures for praise – (26 November 1965) wrote: works such as Rustic Scene – and com- mented, ‘[In] the earlier, adventurously It’s a highly stylised art, but exceed- coloured bicycle picture “Les Routiers” ingly lively, and as it’s done with he has captured vitality in the forms unflattering precision both on a very themselves, not merely reflected in the large and a very small scale, it adds faces.’ up to something pretty impressive … Frederick Laws in The Guardian (24 He has a marvellous eye for telling November 1965) noted, ‘He is one of the and curious detail, a keen observer’s few English artists to have seen the pos- interest in gesture and expression … sibilities of Cubism early and to have This is one of those overdue and emi- sought to domesticate it … He has per- nently worthwhile retrospectives that sisted in the service of an individual make one ashamed one didn’t know vision without fashionable approval or more about an artist before … [T]his popular success.’ Again the early work exhibition makes nonsense of was favoured, as being ‘of great power Lewis’s claim to have been the be-all and inventiveness’. and end-all of Vorticism. Frank Whitford in the Arts Review (11 December 1965) discused at length what T. G. Rosenthal in The Listener (2 he saw as the shortcomings of an artist The Playground, the left-hand section of The Gutter 1934–5 December 1965) noted that who had hardly allowed his work to change over the years; however, he con- lucidity of Roberts’ formal sense which that there is a gentle and more reflective above all, Roberts has a remarkable cluded by noting that ‘paradoxically give his work its convincing claim on side to his work. [That] is to be seen in organizational ability in that he can these paintings which are so stylised, our attention.’ his portraits.’ crowd a canvas or a drawing, such as often forced and mannered in the Terence Mullaly in the Daily Tele- Keith Roberts in the Burlington Mag- Camel March of 1923 … with a multi- extreme, are nevertheless frequently graph (6 December 1965) enthusiasti- azine (January 1966) stood alone in tude of people without ever losing the memorable and extremely stimulating cally commented that ‘Thanks to the launching quite a personal attack on sense of form or space. William and exciting. How is it that paintings Arts Council it can now be asserted that Roberts: ‘The whole affair has been Roberts is no path-finding genius, but with such obvious and glaring faults in our own time only organized and catalogued by Ronald he is very much an artist to be deeply affect the imagination?’Whitford deserves as high a place in this company Alley with a zeal and scholarly precision respected and an essential chapter in answered this question with reference to [“that very English tradition of highly worthy of a better artist. For when all is the history of twentieth-century Eng- The Gutter, where ‘each gesture, each individual and eccentric painters”] as said and done … Roberts is a minor fig- lish painting. inflection of the hand and tilt of the body William Roberts.’ Mullaly particularly ure.’ As the review continues it seems fits in with its neighbour like a piece of praised the ‘savage, yet restrained that Roberts’s satirical depiction of the The Times (20 November 1965) turned and polished steel fits into a power’ of the First World War paintings, Bloomsbury set has particularly rattled struck a more negative note: ‘currents of machine. It is the completeness and utter but also added that ‘What is now clear is the reviewer:

– 10 – – 11 – That a supposedly modernist avant- pens: Paintings of People’ (from the Arts garde artist should attack kindred Council Collection) at Leeds Art Gallery spirits may seem ironic; that is until till 4 May, then touring to Nottingham one begins to appreciate how superfi- Castle, 20 June–6 September; High- cial Roberts’s own ‘modernism’ real- lanes, Drogheda, 17 October 2015–7 ly is. His jibes at the Bloomsbury February 2016; The Atkinson, South- Group are not only tiresome but port, 20 February–22 May 2016; Town- unjustified since his own position is er, Eastbourne, 15 October 2016–8 Jan- actually very close to that of Bell and uary 2017. Grant. His art represents a character- The pencil study for The Park Bench istically English dilution, along narra- 1933 continues in the exhibition ‘Great tive lines, of an essentially formal British Drawings’ at the Ashmolean concept stemming from Europe. Museum, Oxford, until 31 August, and The Toe Dancer 1914 and Two-step I and In other circumstances this might II 1915 continue in the exhibition have led to a Roberts pamphlet, but in ‘Gaudier-Brzeska: New Rhythms. Art, the context of what appears to have been Dance and Movement in London a very successful exhibition Roberts 1911–1915’ at Kettle’s Yard Gallery, seems to have let this pass, and within a Cambridge, until 21 June. few months he must have felt vindicated by being elected a full Academician at the RA. TOM DEVONSHIRE JONES

We were sorry to hear of the death in WR ON DISPLAY February of WRS member the Revd Tom Devonshire Jones, aged 80. The Creole (aka Portrait of a Negress – Described in his Daily Telegraph ob- Hélène Yelin) 1923 – see the September ituary as having been ‘the leading 2012 newsletter – is on loan to Tate national figure in promoting closer Britain from the Potteries Museum as collaboration between religion and the part of the display ‘Spaces of Black visual arts’, from 1981 to 2000 he was Modernism: London 1919–39’ until 4 the vicar of the Robertses’ local October. church, for which he borrowed WR’s The Seaside c.1965–6 is part of the The Crucifixion c.1922 from the exhibition ‘One Day, Something Hap- Methodist Art Collection.

Printed in Great Britain by Parchments of Oxford. Except where indicated, all illustrations are © the estate of John David Roberts.

– 12 – The cover of WR’s 1965 retrospective, showing him as a student at the Slade, as a gunner during the First World War, and as an Associate of the Royal Academy