Winter landscape

We are grateful to Mary Eagle for the following notes, made on the basis of photographs of the picture: ‘Three-quarters of the scene is taken by a changeable sky where low clouds, moving through pale blue air, release loose flecks of snow that drift lightly across the scene from the upper right to lower left. Below, blurred and thickened by mist, is a minimal flat landscape comprising a road with a wide green verge receding between grey winter hedges and a few grey trees. Through the gap where the road breaks the wall of foliage pours a pale yellow light. The time of day is the late afternoon or early morning. … The scene has been painted over a white preparation with the artist using a palette knife and square and round brushes (Roberts, in London, in a letter dated 23 October [1905], expressed his preference for a round ‘Millais’ brush.) ... Throughout his career he tended to manipulate the paint by brush, palette knife and thumb, thereby, as it were, emulating the activity of a scene in the process of recording it. The practice was symptomatic of Roberts’ empathy with his subjects; it could indicate a conscious effort on his part to avoid the mechanical, driving effect of the square-brushed hatching that had been a mannerism of the ‘impressionist’ painters in Australia, and had, to some degree, affected even his brush style. Roberts, in 1912, expressed his dissatisfaction with the complexity and self-consciousness of his painting style: ‘I’ve got the devil in my work that won’t let me keep my lights simple — see too much damned “modelling” in ‘em.’ …

... On grounds of style it is from his second period in England, and the sureness of touch and colour indicates a date in or shortly after the 1909-1910 period of ‘recovery’ in Roberts’ landscape painting, and the paint texture in the foreground suggests a date before 1920. The absence of inscriptions and labels on the reverse of the panel allied to the lack of an exhibition history for the work is fairly conclusive evidence that the panel was not brought to Australia in 1923 but passed out of Roberts’ hands in England. The panel is not traceable (via subject, size and the known works) as one of the small works exhibited in England between 1904 and 1922: more particularly – given its charm and probable date – it is not identifiable as one of the small, non-Italian subjects exhibited at Walker’s Gallery in 1914. ... Judging from what we know about Roberts' procedure during the years 1903-1910, the absence of an inscription supports a date after 1910 rather than 1908-1910. Conjecturally, he parted with the work soon after painting it: possibly as payment for accommodation, or as an impulsive gift to a companion (and without pausing long enough even to write a brief inscription). The artist’s casual treatment of the work, plus its evident place in the evolution of Roberts’ English style, point to a date after 1909, when he felt himself fully recovered from the depression in his art. On those grounds I estimate the date of the work as between 1911 and 1913 — not post-war, when the texture of his paint tended to be dry, and dragged over the thick preparation support rather in the manner of pastel. Snow and leafless hedges indicate the winter season: perhaps the place and time is Mundesley-on-the-sea in Norfolk in January 1911 or Goathland Moor in northern Yorkshire in October 1911.'