William Roberts

William Roberts was born into a family of carpenters in the London district of Hockney. Since 1909, he was trained as a poster painter, and at the same time attended evening classes at the St. Martin’s School of Art. The following year he managed to enroll at the Slade School of Art on a scholarship and graduated from there three years later.

Roberts then discovered Post-Impressionism and Cubism on study trips to France and Italy. Upon his return to England, he painted Cubist works for “Omega Workshops”, an experimental design firm. He later supported the new artistic movement of Vorticism, an English version of Futurism, launched by the authors Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) and Ezra Pound (1885-1972).

During World War I, Roberts initially fought in an artillery unit on the Western Front. In 1918, he served as a war painter with Canadian units. In the 1920s and 1930s, his preferred subjects were city scenes and portraits. In 1932 he represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale.

Roberts survived World War II in Oxford, but then returned to London. In 1948, his works were presented at the summer exhibition of the Royal Academy for the first time. In 1956, the Tate Gallery in London organized an exhibition on Vorticism, but Roberts publicly polemicized against it. In 1958, he became a corresponding member and in 1966, a full member of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Roberts completed his monumental work The Vorticists at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant, Spring 1915 in 1962, now in the Tate Gallery. He produced several paintings with motifs of jockeys and horse racing, including The Paddock, also known as Jockeys (oil on canvas, 123.1 cm x 92.2 cm) in 1928. Another work, titled Jockeys Mounting (pencil and watercolor, 35.1 x 25.1 cm) was created just three years prior to the Helsinki Olympics, but does not match the remark “oil painting” in the Official Report.