John Proctors Blog RAF Bomber Command Aircrew During The Second World War

The Control Room, Civil Defence Headquarters' by William Roberts
Posted by John Proctor at 23:17, January 8 2014.

Many thanks to the William Roberts Society for allowing me to display 'The Control Room, Civil Defence Headquarters' by William Roberts, dated 1941.

According to the Tate Gallery catalogue (1965) - the oil painting on canvas was 'finished in or by April 1941' - so Jim and Allan would still have been at LCDRHQ when Roberts was working on it. The painting had been commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee.

Penguin Books used the painting on the cover of their 1960s 'Modern Classics' version of George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-four'.

This magazine cutting was amongst Jim Ives' effects – it is worth noting the accuracy of detail of the maps and step-ladder – the 'action' does seem to have been concentrated when compared against the magazine photo, although during the aftermath of a raid in the blitz it must have been very busy around the maps. Whilst the figures are rendered in a 'rounded and friendly' style, the fellow second from the left in the rear rank has bony facial features somewhat reminiscent of Jim Ives.

Artist William Roberts was born in Hackney in 1895. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed at a firm of poster designers/advertisers and embarked on evening classes at St Martin's School of Art. In 1910 Roberts won a scholarship to Slade School of Fine Art. He joined Omega Workshops Ltd around 1913, a design enterprise where designers and artists could produce and sell their own products under the principles of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Contemporaries at Omega were Roger Fry, Frederick Etchells, Edward Wadsworth and Percy Wyndham-Lewis among others.

In March 1916 Roberts enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery as a gunner and saw action on the Western Front. He returned to Blighty in 1918 to become an official war artist for the Ministry of Information his paintings included 'The First German Gas Attack at Ypres', 'Burying the Dead After a Battle', 'A Group of British Generals'.

Roberts went on to teach at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and in 1922 married Sarah Kramer, the couple producing a son, John. William Roberts developed a 'Tubist' style of depicting the human form, and specialised in groups of stylised 'tubular' human figures, doing activities, often placed in a London setting. 'The Control Room, Civil Defence Headquarters' is certainly an example of the format - where the figures take on the shapes of the backdrop of the maps.