Roberts, William, 1895-1980

William Roberts was originally trained as a commercial artist. During his apprenticeship, he attended classes at various art schools in London and traveled to France and Italy, where he was influenced by Post-impressionism and Cubism. For a time he was a member of the Omega Workshops, a design enterprise associated with the Bloomsbury group, and was involved in the British school of Futurism known as Vorticism. After serving in the First World War, his work dealt with the horrors of combat and social criticism in general. In his latter years, he turned to the documentation of urban life and portraiture.

The drawings that make up this collection were commissioned by T. E. Lawrence during 1925 and 1926, when an abridged version of Seven pillars of wisdom, entitled Revolt in the desert, proved financially successful, thus allowing work on a subscribers' edition of the original work to continue. None of the drawings in this collection were ultimately included; however, different illustrations by Roberts, chiefly portraits, were used.

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