Robert Lenkiewicz 1941-2002

The painting is further inscribed on the reverse:

The Dance
'Jacob's Ladder'
'The Bishop'
'The Painter'
'Joseph Jeremiah Crone (Corky)'
'Cider Ryder'
'Cockney Jim'
'Snowy'

Mahler soaring out to southside street.
Belle and Joe Prete's, and the dark dark nights.

Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) and only Hermann Prey should sing these
'...are conceived to suggest a wayfarer who has met adversity setting out into the world and wandering as in solitude.'

Kindertotenlieder
In diesen wetter

Inscribed on a printed 'Vagrancy' label attached to the reverse:
It is to be understood that these paintings reflect a study of local vagrancy in and around Plymonth between the month of May 1972 till March 1973. They are related to Melancholy 'The Dance of Death' and Fool Symbolism.

'Jacob's Ladder', so-called due to the stairs up, was a derelict warehouse on The Barbican that the artist opened up to vagrants and which was the venue for his 1973 exhibition entitled Vagrancy. The present work depicts several of the vagrants he was most familiar with and whom he met at Rectory Road, dancing to Mahler's Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Deaths of Children), a piece that was later to inspire the artist on Project 17, Observations on Local Education. The use of sail cloth as the artist's medium reflects his impoverished state at the time and forced him to paint on, 'any old rubbish. A lot of that stuff was brought to me by the dossers themselves' (ibid.p.38).