AN ENGLISH CUBIST

WILLIAM ROBERTS:

The Garden of Eden

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.

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