William Roberts - The crucifixion

Matthew 27:35–36, 38–39, John 19:25–27

Although the three crosses are usually shown in a line, with Jesus’s in the centre (as the Gospels record), Roberts shows them in a tight triangle on the right. Jesus is the left-hand figure, yet remains central viewed from either direction.

At the front, soldiers cast lots; on the left, more soldiers hold back the crowd; on the right, a man in brown/black may represent the Jewish authorities. Around the foot of the cross are three figures – one in yellow, one bearded in brown, and one in grey. The grey figure may be Mary, Jesus’s mother. A fourth figure, in blue kneels towards the soldiers. A fifth, in black and brown, with his back to us, looks at the soldiers but raises his arms towards Jesus. 

Commentary based on A Guide to the Methodist Art Collection.

Born: Hackney, London, 1895

Died: London, 1980

Early life and education

Roberts was the son of a carpenter who showed early artistic promise, encouraged by his family. He studied at St Martin’s School of Art, London and then the Slade School of Art, London (1910–1913). He was initially apprenticed to the poster firm of Sir Joseph Causton Ltd aged just 14, while studying in the evenings at St Martin’s School of Art. When he won a London County Council scholarship he was able to give up the apprenticeship and to study at the Slade where he became friends with David Bomburg. He won the Melville Nettleship Prize for Figure Composition in 1912. He went on to study physics at University College, London (1935–1938). He is known today as the English Cubist.

Life and career

After travelling on the continent, Roberts joined Roger Fry’s Omega workshops in 1913, painting lampshades and tabletops and in 1914 he joined Wyndham Lewis at the Rebel Art Centre. He exhibited as a member of the Vorticist Group in 1915, along with Wyndham Lewis, Edward Wadsworth, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, David Bomberg, and Christopher Nevinson. In the same year he joined the London Group of Artists. In later year Roberts criticized Wyndham Lewis for claiming too much credit for establishing the Vorticist movement and called for David Bomberg to be given the credit he deserved. He struggled financially and also felt that he was ignored by the art establishment. Despite this he began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1948 and in 1958 was elected as an Associate.

Roberts joined the Royal Field Artillery in March 1916 and fought in World War 1. He became an Official War Artist just before the war ended. Roberts, of Irish descent, was brought up as a Protestant but later became a freethinker in religious matters. His work in the Methodist Modern Art Collection, The Crucifixion, was painted after his period as a war artist and the figures and composition resemble those of his paintings and drawings he made of the Western Front.

Roberts taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1925–1960, and at Oxford Technical School, work that was interrupted by a further period as a war artist during World War 2.

Roberts’ solo exhibitions included those in the Chenil Gallery, London (1923), the Redfern Gallery, London (1942), the Leicester Galleries, London (1945, 1949, 1952, and 1960), and a retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London (1965). Posthumous retrospective exhibitions were held in the National Portrait Gallery, London (1984), the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (1985) and the Albemarle Gallery, London (1989).

He participated in a range of group exhibitions including the Cubist Room, Brighton (1913), the First vorticist show in the Doré Gallery, London (1915), British Art in Vienna (1927), Modernism in England 1910-20 in the Tate Gallery, London, The Last Romantics in the Barbican Art Gallery, London (1989), Images of Christ in Northampton Museum and Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral, London (1993) and A bitter truth – avant-garde art and the Great War at the Barbican Art Gallery, London (1994).

His work is represented in a number of collections including the Tate Gallery, London, the Imperial War Museum, London, Leeds University Collection, and Manchester City Art Gallery.

David Buckman, Artists in Britain Since 1945: Volume 2 M to Z. 2 vols, (Bristol: Art Dictionaries Ltd, 2006), pp. 1356–1357. The text is also available on the Art UK website: artuk.org/discover/people/roberts-william-37918 (accessed 30 April 2025)

National Portrait Gallery, William Roberts (1895-1980), the Artist and his Family, Exhibition Catalogue (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1984)

Seeing the Spiritual: A Guide to the Methodist Modern Art Collection, (Oxford, Methodist Modern Art Collection, 2018), pp. 88–89

Andrew Gibbon Williams, William Roberts: An English Cubist (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2003)

Roger Wollen, Catalogue of the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Christian Art with an Account of the Collection’s History, (Oxford: The Trustees of the Methodist Collection of Modern Christian Art, 2003), pp. 108–114