Title
The interval before Round Ten
1919-1920
Artist
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Details
- Date
- 1919-1920
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 92.1 x 122.5 cm stretcher; 114.0 x 144.2 x 6.8 cm frame
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Gift of the Contemporary Art Society, London 1965
- Location
- South Building, ground level, 20th-century galleries
- Accession number
- OB1.1967
- Copyright
- © William Roberts Society
- Artist information
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William Roberts
Works in the collection
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About
According to the conventional lineage of modernist art history, vorticism was the English progeny of cubism and futurism. Among its youngest adherents was the author of this robotic report of a boxing match. By the time he painted it, however, William Roberts had already passed through and abandoned the extremes of vorticist practice in favour of a less radical academic cubism. Even so, 'The interval before Round Ten' is a painting imbued with the edgy virility so loved by the vorticists, as indeed by futurists such as Marinetti. Aggression in human behaviour is given visual form in the agitated activity and angular arrangements of Roberts design. And design is the right word for this deliberately anti-naturalist composition. The ferocity Roberts brought to bear on his subjects is akin to caricature. Little fellow-feeling softens his vision of the all-male madness of pugilism, though the painter delighted in it all the same. Fernand Leger's interests in proletarian themes, and something of his tubular style, infiltrate Roberts's work.
AGNSW Handbook, 1999.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 5 exhibitions
Recent purchases by the Contemporary Art Society, Arts Council Gallery, London, London, 18 Jul 1964–08 Aug 1964
William Roberts, ARA: retrospective exhibition, Tate Britain, England, 20 Nov 1965–19 Dec 1965
William Roberts, ARA: retrospective exhibition, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle- Upon-Tyne, England, 01 Jan 1966–22 Jan 1966
William Roberts, ARA: retrospective exhibition, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, Manchester, 29 Jan 1966–19 Feb 1966
Modern Britain 1900-1960, NGV: International, Melbourne, 15 Nov 2007–24 Feb 2008
Modernists: selections from the European collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 07 Nov 2015–25 Apr 2016
20th-Century galleries, ground level (rehang), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 20 Aug 2022–2023
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Bibliography
Referenced in 14 publications
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Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of New South Wales picturebook, Sydney, 1972, 43 (colour illus.).
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Arts Council of Great Britain, William Roberts ARA: Retrospective Exhibition, London, 1965. cat.no. 6
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Edmund Capon AM, OBE and Jan Meek (Editors), Portrait of a Gallery, 'European 20th Century Art', pg. 91-95, Sydney, 1984, 91.
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René Free, Art Gallery of New South Wales handbook, 'European', pg. 36-56, Sydney, 1988, 55.
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Renée Free, Art Gallery of New South Wales catalogue of British paintings, Sydney, 1987, 169 (illus.).
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Renée Free, AGNSW Collections, 'The Western Heritage, Renaissance to Twentieth Century', pg. 108-172, Sydney, 1994, 160 (colour illus.).
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Renee Free, Art and Australia, 'European Collection', p.63-75, Sydney, Jul 1972, 75 (illus.).
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Andrew Gibbon Williams, William Roberts: An English Cubist, 'Back to Bohemia', pg.48-72, Hampshire, 2004, 52, 54 (colour illus.). fig.31
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Ted Gott, Laurie Benson and Sophie Matthiesson, Modern Britain 1900-1960, Melbourne, 2007, 69 (colour illus.).
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Bruce James, Art Gallery of New South Wales handbook, 'Western Collection: Paintings and Sculpture', pg. 17-77, Sydney, 1999, 56 (colour illus.).
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Anne Kirker and Peter Tomory, British painting 1800–1990 in Australian and New Zealand public collections, Sydney, 1997, 26 (colour illus.), 152. cat.no. 1875
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Alun Leach-Jones, Artist's choice: five decades of artists' writing, '1988: William Roberts', pg. 54, Australia, 2016, 54, 55 (colour illus.), 179.
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Clem Lloyd and Peter Sekuless, Australia's national collections, Sydney, 1980, 256 (illus.).
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1967 Acquisitions, Sydney, 1967. cat.no. 51
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Provenance
Sir Osbert Sitwell, London/England, Commissioned by Sitwell
Dr Harold Widdup, 07 Feb 1947-01 Nov 1962, England, Purchased by Dr Widdup from Christie's London, 7 February 1947, lot no. 62, bequeathed to Contemporary Art Society, London 1962
Contemporary Art Society, London, 01 Nov 1962-Jul 1965, London/England, Gift of the Contemporary Art Society, London 1965. Received 1967.
