William Roberts (painter)

William Roberts (painter)

William Roberts (5 June, 1895 - 20 January, 1980) was an English painter and war artist.

Biography

The son of a carpenter, Roberts was born in Hackney, London. In 1909 he took up an apprenticeship with the advertising firm of Sir Joseph Causton Ltd, intending to become a poster designer and he attended evening classes at St Martin's School of Art in London. He won a London County Council scholarship to the Slade School of Art in 1910. His contemporaries included Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Christopher Nevinson, Stanley Spencer and David Bomberg.

Roberts was intrigued by Post-impressionism and Cubism, an interest fuelled by his travels in France and Italy after leaving the Slade in 1913. He joined Roger Fry's Omega Workshops in October 1913. The modest income that Omega paid, enabled him to create challenging Cubist-style paintings such as "The Return of Ulysses" owned by Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Nottingham.

After leaving Omega he was taken up by Wyndham Lewis, who was forming a British alternative to Futurism. Ezra Pound had suggested the name Vorticism and Roberts' work was featured in both editions of the Vorticist literary magazine "BLAST".

In 1916 Roberts enlisted in the Royal Artillery as a gunner, serving on the Western Front, and the following year he was recruited by the War Office as an official war artist. His experiences at the front shifted the direction of his work, and significant pieces from his wartime output include "The First German Gas Attack at Ypres", a powerful painting that dramatically depicts the horror of war.

After the war, his subject matter turned to the documentation of urban life and portraiture. In 1923 he held his first one-man exhibition at the Chenil Gallery in London and, two years later, he was appointed visiting lecturer at the Central School of Art, a post he held until 1960.

In 2005, WILLIAM ROBERTS: AN ENGLISH CUBIST by ANDREW GIBBON WILLIAMS (Lund Humphries), the standard monograph on this artist, was published.

From 1961 to 1962 Roberts painted "The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, Spring 1915", a nostalgic recollection of a boisterous Vorticist gathering in 1915. He was elected an RA of the Royal Academy in 1966, and continued to depict large scale urban scenes in his paintings until his death in 1980.

External links

* [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1855&page=1&sole=y&collab=y&attr=y&sort=default&tabview=bio Biography at the Tate Gallery]
* [http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/roberts_william.html William Roberts at artcyclopedia.com]
* [http://www.users.waitrose.com/~wrs/ Webpage of the official William Roberts Society]
* [http://www.users.waitrose.com/~wrs/eiffel.html "The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, Spring 1915"]
* [http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,11711,1169433,00.html Maev Kennedy article in the Guardian on exhibition at the Hatton Gallery]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать реферат

Look at other dictionaries:

  • William Roberts — Bill(y) or Wil(liam) Roberts may refer to:*Bill Roberts (born 1925), former American basketball player *Billy Roberts (born 1936), American songwriter and musician credited with composing the 1960s rock music standard Hey Joe *Sir William Roberts …   Wikipedia

  • Roberts (surname) — Roberts derives from the Saxon/Norman given name Robert, meaning bright fame ndash; from the Germanic elements hrod meaning fame and beraht meaning bright. Robert may also mean Son of Robert .Fact|date=September 2007 The name is common in both… …   Wikipedia

  • Ellis William Roberts — (1860 1930) was an English portrait painter …   Wikipedia

  • David Roberts (painter) — David Roberts in 1844 David Roberts RA (24 October 1796 – 25 November 1864) was a Scottish painter. He is especially known for a prolific series of detailed lithograph prints of Egypt and the Near East that he produced during the 1840s from… …   Wikipedia

  • Thomas Roberts (painter) — Thomas Roberts (May 22, 1748 ndash; March 1778) was an Irish landscape painter.Born into a family of artists in County Waterford, he was the eldest son of architect John Roberts. Roberts, the son, would become a student of the Cork painter John… …   Wikipedia

  • Mary Roberts (painter) — Mary Roberts (died 1761) was an American miniaturist active in Charleston, South Carolina in the 1740s and 1750s. One of the earliest American miniaturists, and the first woman recorded as working in the medium in the American colonies,[1] she is …   Wikipedia

  • William Strutt — Portrait peint par Ramsay Richard Reinagle Naissance 1756 Décès 1830 Profession …   Wikipédia en Français

  • William Bradford (Plymouth governor) — Infobox Governor name =William Bradford caption =Bradford s statue in Plymouth Rock State Park, Plymouth, Massachusetts order =2nd, 5th, 7th, 9th 11th Governor of Plymouth Colony office = term start =1621 term end =1633 1635 – 1636 1637 – 1638… …   Wikipedia

  • Roberts, Tom — ▪ Australian painter byname of  Thomas William Roberts   born March 9, 1856, Dorchester, Oxfordshire, Eng. died Sept. 14, 1931, Kallista, Australia       painter who introduced Impressionism to Australia. Arriving in Melbourne at age 13, Roberts… …   Universalium

  • Roberts — /ˈrɒbəts/ (say robuhts) noun 1. Julia, born 1967, US film actor; films include Pretty Woman (1990) and Erin Brockovich (2000), for the latter of which she won the Academy Award for best actress. 2. Nigel, born 1941 in NZ, Australian poet. 3.… …  

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”