William Roberts (painter) - Between The Wars

Between The Wars

In 1915 he had met Sarah Kramer (1900–92), sister of fellow Slade student Jacob Kramer. Sarah appeared constantly in his work thereafter. They married in 1922, and had one son, John David Roberts (1919–95), who, after studying physics at University College London, became a poet and guitar scholar.

After the war, Roberts's subject matter turned to the documentation of urban life and portraiture – portrait subjects included T. E. Lawrence (1922; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) and John Maynard Keynes and his wife, Lydia Lopokova (1932; National Portrait Gallery, London) – as well as some scenes from 'Greek Mythology Christian Mythology', as he put it. in 1922–6 he was commissioned to produce illustrations and decorations for Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. In 1923 he held his first one-man exhibition, at the Chenil Gallery in Chelsea, London, and two years later he was appointed visiting lecturer at the Central School of Art, a post he held until 1960.