William Roberts, R.A.

Redfern Gallery, London, where acquired by Wilfrid A. Evill July 1942 for £42.10.0, by whom bequeathed to Honor Frost in 1963

London, Redfern Gallery, William Roberts, July - August 1942, cat. no.38 (as Windy Day);
London, British Institute of Adult Education (details untraced);
London, Tate Gallery, Seventeen Collectors, March - April 1952, cat. no.226 (as Boating Party);
Hampstead, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Catalogue of the Greater Portion of a Collection of Modern English Paintings, Water Colours, Drawings and Sculpture Belonging to W. A. Evill, March 1955, cat. no.98 (as Boating on the Thames);
London, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Pictures, Drawings, Water Colours and Sculpture, April - May 1961, (part IV- section 1), cat. no.21 (as Canoeing);
Brighton, Brighton Art Gallery, The Wilfrid Evill Memorial Exhibition, June - August 1965, cat. no.153 (as Boating Scene on the Thames);
London, Tate Gallery, William Roberts ARA Retrospective Exhibition, 20th November - 19th December 1965, cat. no.67 (as Windy Day), with Arts Council Tour to Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne and Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.

Andrew Gibbon Williams, William Roberts: An English Cubist, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2004, p.107 (as Windy Day).

The colours, particularly the green and red tones, are much brighter and fresher than the catalogue illustration suggests. Original canvas. There is some minor frame abrasion along all but the right edge, with one or two resultant spots of paint loss, including a spot to the lower edge in the lower right quadrant. The surface has recently been cleaned. Generally the work is in excellent original condition. Ultraviolet light reveals a vertical line of very slight fluorescence running from the top edge exactly 19cm from the right edge, through the central standing figure to the bottom edge. This does not appear to be retouching. Other pigments fluoresce that are the hand of the artist. Held under glass in a stained wood frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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While previously exhibited under the title Boating Scene on the Thames, the depiction of revellers leisurely punting past grassy fields and resting cows suggests this was a misnomer, and the catalogue to Roberts' retrospective at the Tate in 1965 identifies the present work as a scene of the River Cherwell. The work is in fact one of a small group of paintings Roberts executed during the war at Marston just outside of Oxford, where the family lived at 76 Copse Lane from 1940 to 1945.

Because of its proximity to Oxford, Marston was popular with academics and artists, among the notable residents during Roberts' time being the philosopher John Langshaw Austin, the botanist John Haker Harley and the classical scholar Eric Robertson Dodds. The environment in Marston, with its active community and busy bank sides always filled with fishermen, punters, and sunbathers, as well as Roberts' trips into the bustling academic environment of Oxford, provided the artist with a wealth of subject matter.

His bank side scenes of this date, which in many ways anticipate to the canal scenes of London painted following the war, clearly demonstrate the infinite possibilities Roberts found in the depiction of the simple joys of everyday events. Parson's Pleasure (1944, Private Collection) and Punting on the Cherwell (1939, Private Collection) also ideally combine meticulous social observation with well perceived elements of the natural environment, and these outdoor scenes are amongst the most admired in his oeuvre.

In the present work, we see both of these strengths in full force. In the patches of fuzzy moss that grow on the fallen and pollarded trees, the tubular branches that twist and bend, the stylized cows that sit like chess pieces upon a lime green expanse and the rounded undulating shapes of the trees and hills beyond, Roberts turns the landscape behind the river into a surrealist playground of texture, colour, and form. The characters in the punts come to life through Roberts' depiction, muscles bulging and straining with effort, hands waving, heads raised to feel the wind. All of this detail is expertly and subtly controlled through Roberts' composition, the punt in the foreground, the bank side and the tree line creating strong horizontals, while the poles, tarp and standing figures create an interplay of verticals and diagonals.