AN ENGLISH CUBIST

WILLIAM ROBERTS:

Which is the Way to Barcelona?

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.

Which is the Way to Barcelona?, 1970 (signed and dated)
Pencil and watercolour, 48 cm x 35.5 cm

In the 1960s and '70s John David Roberts made trips to Spain to attend the International Course of Guitar and Vihuela held each year by Emilio Pujol initially in Lérida, and to travel in the country and sometimes to North Africa after the course. He published his notes on these trips as Guitar Travels (Valencia, 1977), and in his account of his 1966 trip he imagines Don Quixote and Sancho Panzo encountering a combine harvester on the road in 1960s Spain (pp. 49–50). Here William Roberts seems to imagine that the knight and his companion instead encounter Roberts's son. 'I carry a guitar and vihuela (as in '69)' – John Roberts, note in the Tate archive.
PROVENANCE: Estate of John David Roberts (2001), accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Tate 2007 (T12643)
EXHIBITION HISTORY: Royal Academy 1980