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Lot Essay
'A barn interior painted at Mundesley the following summer, 1908, and work done in 1910 or 1911, in Yorkshire, I think, marked the recovery of his work after the black period.' (Caleb Roberts writing on his father's life while he Caleb was a boy in London. ML Ms A2481.5)
This breakthrough picture painted by Roberts in Norfolk in 1908 and finished in his new Hampstead studio in 1909 was widely exhibited in the decade that followed, and much remarked on. It was bought by Lionel Robinson, the owner of the barn in his grounds at Old Buckenham Hall, possibly at the Walkers Gallery exhibition in 1914 (where it was priced at 30 gns), and has remained, unseen in the intervening years, in the family collection ever since.
Roberts painting took time to recover after he had finally completed the commission to paint the ceremony of the opening of the first Commonwealth Parliament in 1901: 'The commission took three years to fulfil, it lifted him up, he met and painted the Duke and Duchess of York and other dignitaries who had participated in the ceremony, it took him to Europe where he had wanted to be, and gave him an assured income for three years. But as decisively as the commission had elevated him it put him down, way down, so that in April 1904, after the big picture had been completed, exhibited at the Royal Academy and given a double page spread in the Academy Pictures of the year, Roberts returned to his interrupted career in a dark studio in Warwick Square feeling debilitated by the experience. ... In London in 1903 he found a robust style of direct painting in the ascendant which was almost the antithesis of his style. Direct painting in London in the early 1900s was a rapid but methodical tonal method: the apotheosis of oil sketching which, after nearly a century's cultivation had reached the status of a technique for master paintings. John Singer Sarjeant was perhaps the best-known exponent of its swift and strokey style. ... The choice was open for Roberts to ignore direct painting, but instead, like McCubbin and Streeton, he experienced deeply the shock of its triumph. ... Nevertheless, like McCubbin, like Streeton, like many others, he was influenced by the direct style, admitting ... 'the unerringness of it all is most interesting. ... By 31 March 1905 he had found a more congenial studio ... at 39A Harrington Road, South Kensington. The bad period in his paintings continued. He was rarely satisfied with what he produced. Sometimes he found himself too nervous to begin a picture. But the Bulldog was by nature dogged and tried various ways of overcoming the block. He decided at one time not to paint portraits or figure pictures before he had registered a recovery through painting small sketches outdoors. He resorted to small oil paintings which could be finished before uncertainty took him as happened when he tried larger projects. One initial, curious concession to the physicality of direct painting may have been Roberts's decision, around 1904-1905, to paint on a thickly textured underpainting.' (M. Eagle, op. cit., pp.86-7)
Roberts made his first trip to Mundesley in September 1907 with the Delmers (Professor Delmer over on holiday from Berlin) and they were joined by Frederick McCubbin (who had arrived from Australia in July). McCubbin wrote to Roberts from Australia in early 1908: 'Those lovely walks in the evening through lanes [in] the afterglow and the wondrous walk up to the old farm with Mrs Roberts w[h]ere men were putting the hay in stacks ...'
Roberts returned to Mundesley in 1908 ('We took six weeks on the Norfolk coast, a great place of skies and changes.' Roberts to Bavin, Bavin papers NLA mc 1487/7) and the present picture was taken on this second visit. He mentions his breakthrough in his letters of 28 November 1908 to Rodney Cherry ('Think I told you I was in turmoil about my work and working - I've got some light now and it's coming.' Phyllis Tuson papers NLA ms 720) and of 11 February 1909 to S.W. Pring ('Since last spring has come a kind of dawning into my work after 4 or 5 years of doubt & uncertainty. It began with a small landscape & has gone pretty consistently through larger ones - Down at Mundesley I got 4 things & brought them back ...'). He described the present picture in his letter to McCubbin, sent from Hampstead, 14 November 1909: 'Speaking of these great works [by Claude, Watteau, Hals] leads me naturally [his joke] to tell of a barn, I got it in Norfolk, worked on it here [i.e. Hampstead] ... They hung it at the Institute for which I was dashed grateful - & a couple of artists wrote me compliments about it ... and a provincial gallery Hull the same.' (LaTrobe library, SLV, ms 8187 Box 596/4)
Lionel Robinson (1866-1922), an Australian stockbroker and racehorse breeder who made his fortune in the Broken Hill and Kalgoorlie mining booms, took his broking house, Lionel Robinson, Clark & Co, to London in 1899. He bought Old Buckenham Hall in 1906 and built a vast mansion, two cricket pitches and a stud farm, and famously organised international cricket matches at Old Buckenham before and after the Great War.
We are grateful to Mary Eagle for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
This breakthrough picture painted by Roberts in Norfolk in 1908 and finished in his new Hampstead studio in 1909 was widely exhibited in the decade that followed, and much remarked on. It was bought by Lionel Robinson, the owner of the barn in his grounds at Old Buckenham Hall, possibly at the Walkers Gallery exhibition in 1914 (where it was priced at 30 gns), and has remained, unseen in the intervening years, in the family collection ever since.
Roberts painting took time to recover after he had finally completed the commission to paint the ceremony of the opening of the first Commonwealth Parliament in 1901: 'The commission took three years to fulfil, it lifted him up, he met and painted the Duke and Duchess of York and other dignitaries who had participated in the ceremony, it took him to Europe where he had wanted to be, and gave him an assured income for three years. But as decisively as the commission had elevated him it put him down, way down, so that in April 1904, after the big picture had been completed, exhibited at the Royal Academy and given a double page spread in the Academy Pictures of the year, Roberts returned to his interrupted career in a dark studio in Warwick Square feeling debilitated by the experience. ... In London in 1903 he found a robust style of direct painting in the ascendant which was almost the antithesis of his style. Direct painting in London in the early 1900s was a rapid but methodical tonal method: the apotheosis of oil sketching which, after nearly a century's cultivation had reached the status of a technique for master paintings. John Singer Sarjeant was perhaps the best-known exponent of its swift and strokey style. ... The choice was open for Roberts to ignore direct painting, but instead, like McCubbin and Streeton, he experienced deeply the shock of its triumph. ... Nevertheless, like McCubbin, like Streeton, like many others, he was influenced by the direct style, admitting ... 'the unerringness of it all is most interesting. ... By 31 March 1905 he had found a more congenial studio ... at 39A Harrington Road, South Kensington. The bad period in his paintings continued. He was rarely satisfied with what he produced. Sometimes he found himself too nervous to begin a picture. But the Bulldog was by nature dogged and tried various ways of overcoming the block. He decided at one time not to paint portraits or figure pictures before he had registered a recovery through painting small sketches outdoors. He resorted to small oil paintings which could be finished before uncertainty took him as happened when he tried larger projects. One initial, curious concession to the physicality of direct painting may have been Roberts's decision, around 1904-1905, to paint on a thickly textured underpainting.' (M. Eagle, op. cit., pp.86-7)
Roberts made his first trip to Mundesley in September 1907 with the Delmers (Professor Delmer over on holiday from Berlin) and they were joined by Frederick McCubbin (who had arrived from Australia in July). McCubbin wrote to Roberts from Australia in early 1908: 'Those lovely walks in the evening through lanes [in] the afterglow and the wondrous walk up to the old farm with Mrs Roberts w[h]ere men were putting the hay in stacks ...'
Roberts returned to Mundesley in 1908 ('We took six weeks on the Norfolk coast, a great place of skies and changes.' Roberts to Bavin, Bavin papers NLA mc 1487/7) and the present picture was taken on this second visit. He mentions his breakthrough in his letters of 28 November 1908 to Rodney Cherry ('Think I told you I was in turmoil about my work and working - I've got some light now and it's coming.' Phyllis Tuson papers NLA ms 720) and of 11 February 1909 to S.W. Pring ('Since last spring has come a kind of dawning into my work after 4 or 5 years of doubt & uncertainty. It began with a small landscape & has gone pretty consistently through larger ones - Down at Mundesley I got 4 things & brought them back ...'). He described the present picture in his letter to McCubbin, sent from Hampstead, 14 November 1909: 'Speaking of these great works [by Claude, Watteau, Hals] leads me naturally [his joke] to tell of a barn, I got it in Norfolk, worked on it here [i.e. Hampstead] ... They hung it at the Institute for which I was dashed grateful - & a couple of artists wrote me compliments about it ... and a provincial gallery Hull the same.' (LaTrobe library, SLV, ms 8187 Box 596/4)
Lionel Robinson (1866-1922), an Australian stockbroker and racehorse breeder who made his fortune in the Broken Hill and Kalgoorlie mining booms, took his broking house, Lionel Robinson, Clark & Co, to London in 1899. He bought Old Buckenham Hall in 1906 and built a vast mansion, two cricket pitches and a stud farm, and famously organised international cricket matches at Old Buckenham before and after the Great War.
We are grateful to Mary Eagle for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.