Study for Kites

William Roberts is a British painter of figure compositions and portraits. He was a pioneer of abstract art before the First World War . Roberts worked outside the mainstream. Later in his career he would describe himself as an English Cubist.

In 1914 Roberts joined the short-lived art movement the Vorticists, founded by the artist and writer Wyndam Lewis. The Vorticists believed that British art at this time was in a decayed state. Their aesthetic combined the geometrical fragmentation of Cubism with Futurist machine-like imagery.

During the First World War, Roberts was a gunner on the Western Front . Later he became a war artist, a position he held in both world wars. He is best remembered for his large complex and colourful compositions.

Roberts has marked this reference picture with a grid to help him to transfer it to canvas. The canvas is marked with a corresponding grid allowing the picture to be enlarged and transferred one square at a time.