AN ENGLISH CUBIST

WILLIAM ROBERTS:

Study in the War, 1914–1918
+ study

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. Any auction prices quoted may not include all fees and taxes, such as VAT and Artist's Resale Right charges.

Study in the War, 1914–1918 – study (aka Soldiers Hauling a Howitzer), 1917–19 (signed and inscribed '17')
The work may have been post-dated to 1917 to place it outside the period when Roberts was an official war artist and every drawing he made became the property of the Crown.
Ink and watercolour, 16.6 cm x 33.5 cm

PROVENANCE: Samantha Frank
EXHIBITION HISTORY (as Soldiers Hauling a Howitzer): Newcastle 2004, Madrid 2008, Osborne Samuel 2014

*

Study in the War, 1914–1918 (from 1999 aka Gunners Pulling Cannons, Ypres), 1917–19
Pencil, pen, black ink and watercolour, 27.4 cm x 47.7 cm

'When the Germans had been forced to fall back, they had abandoned some of their field guns which now stood isolated in no-man's land. The commanders of the 51st Brigade batteries arranged among themselves to try and salvage these guns. D. Battery's task – and it was rumoured that our major had chosen the hardest – was to bring in two field howitzers that had been left a short distance beyond our front lines. On the night fixed for the undertaking, our salvage party having been given a double tot of rum, then set off with two six-horse teams, to do the job. The horses were left behind our own line while we crept out. Fortunately there was no barbed wire to tangle with and we endeavoured to free the gun wheels embedded in the hard earth. Without arousing any hostile activity from the opposite trenches, we manhandled the two howitzers to where we had left the horses' – Roberts, Memories of the War to End War 1914–18.
PROVENANCE: Sir Michael Sadler > Leicester Galleries > Jane Rendel (1944) > Sotheby's 8 Nov. 1989 (as Study in the War, 1914–1918; £25,300) > ? > Christie’s 4 June 1999 (as Gunners Pulling Cannons, Ypres; £41,100) > Spink Leger Gallery > ? > Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert > ? > Fine Art Society
EXHIBITION HISTORY: Leicester Galleries (1) 1944 (as Study in the War, 1914–1918), Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert 2004, Fine Art Society 2009
What appears to be a full-size copy of this work was exhibited as War Scene in Hanover 1996: see Blast. Vortizismus – Die erste Avantgarde in England 1914–1918, ed. Karin Orchard (Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1996), p. 264.

AN ENGLISH CUBIST

WILLIAM ROBERTS:

Study in the War, 1914–1918+ study

Study in the War, 1914–1918
+ study