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Lot Essay
‘Roberts converts the most mundane of activities into scenes of ritual significance' (A. Gibbon Williams, William Roberts: An English Cubist, Aldershot, 2004, p. 133).
In 1946 William Roberts moved to 14 St Mark's Crescent, backing on to the canal near Regent's Park, London NW1, where he lived with his family for the rest of his life. His routine included a daily walk across Primrose Hill and in other London Parks. He would make studies of details that caught his interest such as this family grouping at a drinking fountain and worked them up into complex compositions in his studio.
Painted in 1967, the year after Roberts achieved full Royal Academician status, The Drinking Fountain is representative of the style Roberts had been perfecting since the Second World War. Andrew Gibbon Williams writes ‘Rather than rethink his pictorial language, Roberts allows his pictures to rely for their impact on unusual and startling visual juxtapositions’ (ibid., p. 130). This is certainly the case with The Drinking Fountain, where juxtapositions are visible in both the strikingly contrasting colours and shapes of the figures. For example, the pale yellow of the children’s sleeves and trousers and the blue and purple of the women’s clothing. The work has a simple composition, as the figures are crowded evenly around the central drinking fountain. However, the overall visual result is more complex, with Roberts' use of strong horizontal lines in the folds of the figures' clothes and mirrored in the modelling of the fountain, in contrast to the diagonals of the children's limbs. This combination serves to give the simple act of adults helping children to drink from the fountain an almost ceremonial quality.
We are very grateful to David Cleall (William Roberts Society) for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
In 1946 William Roberts moved to 14 St Mark's Crescent, backing on to the canal near Regent's Park, London NW1, where he lived with his family for the rest of his life. His routine included a daily walk across Primrose Hill and in other London Parks. He would make studies of details that caught his interest such as this family grouping at a drinking fountain and worked them up into complex compositions in his studio.
Painted in 1967, the year after Roberts achieved full Royal Academician status, The Drinking Fountain is representative of the style Roberts had been perfecting since the Second World War. Andrew Gibbon Williams writes ‘Rather than rethink his pictorial language, Roberts allows his pictures to rely for their impact on unusual and startling visual juxtapositions’ (ibid., p. 130). This is certainly the case with The Drinking Fountain, where juxtapositions are visible in both the strikingly contrasting colours and shapes of the figures. For example, the pale yellow of the children’s sleeves and trousers and the blue and purple of the women’s clothing. The work has a simple composition, as the figures are crowded evenly around the central drinking fountain. However, the overall visual result is more complex, with Roberts' use of strong horizontal lines in the folds of the figures' clothes and mirrored in the modelling of the fountain, in contrast to the diagonals of the children's limbs. This combination serves to give the simple act of adults helping children to drink from the fountain an almost ceremonial quality.
We are very grateful to David Cleall (William Roberts Society) for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.