AN ENGLISH CUBIST

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WILLIAM ROBERTS:

Classical Scene

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Illustration © The Estate of John David Roberts. Reproduced with the permission of the William Roberts Society. Catalogue information based on the catalogue raisonné by David Cleall. For this and full details of the exhibitions cited, see the links below. Any auction prices quoted may not include all fees and taxes, such as VAT and Artist's Resale Right charges.

Classical Scene, c.1920
Red chalk, 17.4 cm x 22 cm

The Cambridge 1985 catalogue described this 'Unidentified classical scene' as 'perhaps a study for a Return of Odysseus', though it is possibly more likely that it depicts a simplified version of the start of Book 3 of the Odyssey, when Odysseus' son, Telemachus, arrives at Pylus in search of information about his father, translated by William Cowper in the 1910 Everyman's Library edition as follows:

The sun, emerging from the lucid waves,
Ascended now the brazen vault with light
For the inhabitants of earth and heav'n,
When in their bark at Pylus they arrived,
City of Neleus. On the shore they found
The people sacrificing; bulls they slew
Black without spot, to Neptune azure-hair'd.
On ranges nine of seats they sat; each range
Received five hundred, and to each they made
Allotment equal of nine sable bulls.