William Roberts, R.A.

Acquired directly from the Artist by Wilfrid A. Evill April 1938 for £25.0.0, by whom bequeathed to Honor Frost in 1963

London, Cooling Galleries, London Artists' Association, London Artists' Association Retrospective Exhibition, March 1934, cat. no.12;
London, Lefevre Gallery, New Paintings and Drawings by William Roberts, February - March 1935, cat. no.12;
London, Leicester Galleries, Works by Members of the London Group, March 1937, cat. no.42;
London, Redfern Gallery, William Roberts, July - August 1942, cat. no.15;
Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, British Council, British Section, UNESCO International Exhibition, Exposition Internationale d'Art Moderne, November - December 1946, cat. no.46;
London, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Catalogue of Part of a Collection of Oil Paintings, Water Colours, Drawings and Sculpture Belonging to W. A. Evill, Esq., December 1947 - February 1948, cat. no.12;
London, Tate Gallery, Seventeen Collectors, March - April 1952, cat. no.152;
London, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Pictures, Drawings, Water Colours and Sculpture, April - May 1961, (part IV- section 3) cat. no.4;
Brighton, Brighton Art Gallery, The Wilfrid Evill Memorial Exhibition, June - August 1965, cat. no.152;
London, Tate Gallery, William Roberts ARA Retrospective Exhibition, 20th November - 19th December 1965, cat. no.48, illustrated pl.12, 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, London, 2005, pp.85-6, 105, illustrated p.87, fig.61;
William Roberts Society Newsletter, March 2011 (unpaginated).

Original canvas. There are artist's pinholes in the corners. The surface has recently been cleaned. Generally the work is in good original condition. Ultraviolet light reveals a few small spots of flecked retouching in the sky and the river upper right. The tiny retouching in the river corresponds to the dark mark visible to the naked eye. Other pigments fluoresce which are apparently the hand of the artist. Held in a painted plaster frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Well known for his particularly stylistic documentation of modern British life, Roberts was also drawn to mythical, Biblical and historical themes throughout the course of his career and the Judgement of Paris is amongst the most accomplished of this genre. An earlier painting of this same subject was exhibited at the London Group in 1925, and several studies for the 1933 version exist in various media.

According to the myth, which varies slightly between the Greek and Roman sources, Zeus held a banquet to celebrate the marriage of Achilles' parents. Having not been invited, Eris, the Goddess of Discord, threw a golden apple into the fray, which was inscribed 'to the fairest one'. Athena (Goddess of War), Hera (Zeus's wife and Queen of the Gods) and Aphrodite (Goddess of Love) each claimed that the apple was certainly meant for them, and the mortal Paris was appointed by Zeus to judge who should receive the prize. Having each bathed in the spring of Ida, the goddesses appeared to Paris, who was tending his flock on the mountain, and attempted to bribe him with various prizes. Hera offered to make him King, Athena to transform him into the ultimate warrior, and Aphrodite offered the love of the world's most beautiful woman. In the end, he awarded the apple to Aphrodite and received in return the love of Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, thereby providing the catalyst for the Trojan War.

The Judgement of Paris is a theme which has appealed to artists for centuries. Here Roberts' adopts a commonly used compositional motif, closely grouping the three nude goddesses, two seen from one direction and the third from the opposite. While vaguely reminiscent of Botticelli's three graces, similar ensembles are seen in The Judgement of Paris by both Lucas Cranach the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens. Rubens' version was acquired by the National Gallery in London in 1844, and is a work with which Roberts was very likely familiar.

When working from a written source, Roberts' particular brilliance lies in his quirky mixing of the modern with the classic and well known narratives, never resting on a literal interpretation. The Birth of Venus (Private Collection), for example, which was painted almost twenty years after the present work in 1954, depicts a nude Venus emerging on the shore before a group of contemporary fishermen who are dividing up their daily catch.

While certainly drawn from the mythical theme, Judgement of Paris intermixes contemporary figures, Roberts' own documentary style and personal imagery, and different moments of the narrative. The work was likely painted following the Roberts' trip to Alicante in Spain, and Paris is here a modern day Spanish peasant, appearing twice, both in the foreground and at an earlier point in the story, daydreaming with his crook. The goddesses are pictured with the river in which they bathed in the distance, and Paris seems to be flirtatiously tempting them as much as they are tempting him. What he is offering is ambiguous, as the apple he holds seems less a golden mythical trifle and more an edible plaything for his bouncing dog.

We are grateful to David Cleall for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.