
In Tate Britain
- Artist
- William Roberts 1895–1980
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 914 × 762 mm
frame: 1048 × 902 × 68 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 1965
- Reference
- T00813
Display caption
Roberts’s early work was abstract and he joined Wyndham Lewis’s vorticist group. After the First World War, he made a name as the painter of everyday modern scenes. While film had been invented in the late 19th century, it reached new heights of sophistication and popularity in the 1920s, the age of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the rise of Hollywood. Movies were silent until 1927 and were accompanied by live music. Many music halls, traditional places of popular entertainment, were adapted to show films.
Gallery label, September 2016
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Catalogue entry
William Roberts 1895-1980
T00813 The Cinema 1920
Inscr. ‘Roberts’, b.c.
Canvas, 36 x 30 (91.5 x 76).
Purchased from Miss Honor Frost, as executrix of the late Wilfrid Evill (Grant-in-Aid) 1965:
Coll: Sydney Schiff; Mrs. Violet SchifF; Lords Gallery; sold Sotheby’s, 13 July 1960 (187, repr.); bt. W. A. Evill.
Exh: Forty Years of Modern Art 1907–1947, I.C.A., February–March 1948 (79); Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism, Tate Gallery, July–August 1956 (188), and Arts Council tour, 1956 (76); The Wilfrid Evill Collection, Brighton Art Gallery, July–August 1965 (151); Tate Gallery, November–December 1965, and Arts Council tour, Newcastle and Manchester, January–February 1966 (10, repr.).
Repr: Sir Joseph Duveen, Bt., Thirty Years of British Art, 1930, p. 163; William Roberts, Paintings and Drawings 1909–1964, 1964, p. 10 (dated 1919, entitled The Silent Screen’).
Based on a small cinema in Warren Street which is now used as a television studio. A squared up drawing for it in pen, pencil and wash belongs to the Manchester City Art Galleries. This corresponds in almost every detail to the finished work.
Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1965–1966, London 1967.
Explore
- architecture(30,960)
-
- features(8,872)
-
- stair / step(514)
- places of entertainment(399)
-
- cinema(13)
- music and entertainment(2,331)
-
- cinema(206)
- audience(103)
- UK countries and regions(24,355)
-
- England(19,202)
You might like
-
Frank L. Emanuel Kensington Interior
1912 -
William Roberts The Char
1924 -
Paul Nash Behind the Inn
1919–22 -
William Roberts Self-Portrait Wearing a Cap
1931 -
John Nash The Cornfield
1918 -
Walter Richard Sickert The New Bedford
c.1914–15 -
William Roberts The Diners
1919 -
David Bomberg Barges
1919 -
William Roberts Esther Lahr
1925 -
William Roberts Playground (The Gutter)
1934–5 -
William Roberts Skipping (The Gutter)
1934–5 -
William Ratcliffe Clarence Gardens
1912 -
William Roberts The Port of London
c.1920–4 -
William Roberts Deposition from the Cross
c.1926 -
William Ratcliffe Hampstead Garden Suburb from Willifield Way
c.1914