Additional Images

Provenance:

Joyner, Canadian Art, 7 December 1999, lot 79
Private Collection, Toronto

Exhibited:

Exposition d'art, Saint-Laurent, 8-17 May 1970, Ville de Saint-Laurent, Quebec

Note:

In the summer months, Roberts painted landscapes outdoors and in the colder seasons he moved to his studio to paint still lifes and portraits. Roberts thought about still lifes as landscapes,

“I like to have things reduced as much as possible to a wall, the table, to the few objects on the table and then perhaps by considerable changing, to be able to bring these things all together so that no one part of the picture is more important than another.[...] I know that I tend when painting landscape often to think of the sky as a backdrop, almost as a wall.” [1]

This ideology is exemplified in the still life and two portraits offered. The verdant green cloth in Still Life - Pumpernickel, Green Cloth and Flowers is juxtaposed against an ochre wall which creates the backdrop for fresh pink flowers, citrus fruits and a plump, freshly cut pumpernickel loaf, all tipped up for the viewer to see.

In the two portraits, one of his first wife Marian (lot 66), and the second of a girl (lot 67) while painted about twenty years apart, the choice of colour unites these lovely portraits of the sitters - both in blue tops against reduced ochre and sable brown walls.

[1] From transcripts of an audio-taped interview, Alfred Pinsky, 1966