AN ENGLISH CUBIST

WILLIAM ROBERTS:

Poster for the Exhibition of French Art 1914–1919

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.

Poster for the Exhibition of French Art 1914–1919 (Mansard Gallery, Heal's), 1919
Poster, 75 cm x 48 cm

In March 1919 Sacheverell Sitwell visited Modigliani's studio in Paris and decided to put on an exhibition of French art in London (Sarah Bradford, Sacheverell Sitwell: Splendours and Miseries (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993), pp. 91–6). Leopold Zborowski, art dealer and friend of Modigliani, was to act as agent. The exhibition was held at the Mansard Gallery in Heal's in August–September 1919, and included work by Picasso, Modigliani, Leger, Derain and Dufy. In his preface to the catalogue, Arnold Bennett described the exhibition as 'the first of its kind since the war, and the best of its kind since the celebrated exhibition at the Grafton Galleries many years ago [1910–11]'. William Roberts's poster design is a vertical composition against a yellow background. A group of stylised figures, viewed from a high perspective, are in an art-gallery context. It is similar in style to the three panels painted for the Hôtel de la Tour Eiffel in autumn 1919. The 1965 Tate Gallery catalogue notes that the typography was not done by Roberts.
EXHIBITION HISTORY: Tate Gallery 1965