AN ENGLISH CUBIST

WILLIAM ROBERTS:

The Garden of Eden + studies

Illustration © The Estate of John David Roberts. Catalogue information based on the catalogue raisonné by David Cleall. For this and full details of the exhibitions cited, see the links below.

The Garden of Eden (aka Adam and Eve) – two studies on a single sheet, c.1926
Black chalk 18.0 cm x 27.2 cm

EXHIBITION HISTORY: Reading 1983, Cambridge 1985, Albemarle Gallery 1989

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(recto) The Garden of Eden (aka Adam and Eve) – study, c.1926
(Signed and dated 1923 in ballpoint – the use of ballpoint suggests the dating was done much later, perhaps the work of John David Roberts for the 1985 Cambridge exhibition. Stylistically the Tate date of 1926 seems more likely.)
Charcoal and pencil, squared, 10.2 cm x 12.7 cm

EXHIBITION HISTORY: Cambridge 1985, Tate Britain 2012

(verso) The Garden of Eden (aka Adam and Eve) – study

PROVENANCE: Estate of John David Roberts, accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Tate 2007 (T12662)

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The Garden of Eden (aka Adam and Eve), c.1926
Oil on canvas, 40.6 cm x 50.8 cm

'rejected from the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, in 1929, on the grounds that American taste was not yet ready for such pictures, and was also taken out of a provincial exhibition in England by the mayor, newspaper articles and interviews resulting' – Tate Gallery 1965 catalogue
PROVENANCE: Mrs Isobel Powys Marks (1965) > Christie's 7 June 2002 (£33,460) > The Ingram Collection of Modern British Art at the Lightbox, Woking
EXHIBITION HISTORY: London Artists' Association (2) 1927, Leicester Galleries (2) 1927, Southport 1928, London Artists' Association (1) 1929 (45 gns; 'touching in its observation of fallen humanity. The disapproving deer is a comment of genius' – The Times, 18 June 1929), Hamburg 1932 (as Der Garten Eden), Tate Gallery 1965, Newcastle 2004 (where dated 1923), Hastings 2016, Newcastle 2018, Sheffield 2018, Cookham 2019, Bedford 2022