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. Will Roberts
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"Roses", 1998
oil on canvas
52x40cm
"The Old Farmer (Stephens)", 1978
oil on canvas
61x51cm
"Contented Man", 1976
oil on canvas
26x21cm(in private collections)
Will Roberts was born in 1910 in Ruabon/North Wales; he died in 2000 in Neath/South Wales. At first he persued a career as a jeweller, but from 1930 to 1932 he studied Fine Art at Swansea Art College and thereafter concentrated on his art. The most important influence in his artistic career was Josef Herman.
Roberts, already a painter for some 20 years, became a close associate of Herman’s. His friendship with the latter marked him out as the artist’s closest disciple. In the first instance, Roberts had gone to see Herman with a portfolio of works, for Herman’s scrutiny. The latter was impressed and offered to act as tutor to him, as Will Roberts’ widow recalls. Although there is a visible relationship between the two painters’ work, there is an important difference. Kyffin Williams expressed the view (see introduction to the above book) that: “Whereas Josef Herman dedicated himself to the painting of mankind in a powerful manner that owes much to the influences of Constant Permeke, the work of Will Roberts is more specific and shows the individuality of human kind”. Perhaps the difference between the two painters’ styles has to be sought in their cultural backgrounds. In an interview with Phillip George for ARCADE, No.15, 1981, Roberts made an interesting comment. George observed that Roberts’ painting had been much influenced by the Berlin Expressionism of Jewish exiles, to which Roberts is said to have remarked: “…the irony is that they should have brought a style of painting which developed in the decadence which led to their persecution”. The reference to Jewish exiles had its origin in a remark by Roberts in a paper in Artists in Wales in the 1970s. He said that Martin Bloch, whom he knew well and alongside whom he had painted, also had much to impart. Heinz Koppel was another painter whom Roberts knew personally.
"Of good and significant art being produced in this country at the present time, that of Will Roberts must be among the most approachable and least perplexing, advancing no theories and grinding no social, political or other axes. It depicts ordinary people and landscape of South Wales, where he lives. His pictures have an indefinable presence that is reassuring. They transport the viewer to a world on which man no longer seeks to impose himself but in which he conforms with the nature of things and is content to play a small part in a universal harmony.
Will Roberts lives in Neath and finds his subject matter thereabouts. This is not due to provicialism on his part: by temperament and endowment he is very much a citizen of the world. For one thing he likes the scarred Glamorgan landscape, which provides a human connection that feels essential to his art. "Man", he says, "is never absent from my pictures, even though he is not always seen". Nor does he find that re-working the same motif time and again cramps his style: rather the contrary. In principle it is a question of end versus means. For Will Roberts the primary end of art is self-expression, while subject-matter is one of several means combining to that end. It is when all the means come a second nature to him and require no thought that he is best able to pursue the end single-mindedly." (quoted, by kind permission of the artist, from the exhibition catalogue to his 1979 exhibition at the Tegfryn Art Gallery, Menai Bridge, North Wales.). More here
Awards: 1928 part-time scholarship to the Swansea School of Art; 1964 the Bynge-Stamper Prize; Fellow of the Royal Cambrian Academy
Commissions: 1963 BBC film (& several thereafter); Llandaff Festival Exhibition devoted to his work.
Exhibition Range: 1949 Arts Council of Great Britain Touring Exh.; 1950s showing at leading London Galleries as well as being selected regularly for the Royal Academy Summer Show; since the mid-1960s he had solo exhibitions at the Attic Gallery Swansea, Albany Gallery Cardiff, Tegfryn Gallery North Wales.
