Item 010/19 - Liddell's Arch by Frederick Roe

Framed and glazed watercolour of Liddell's Arch. Frame: Fine gold gesso frame with school crest top centre [frame condition: needs restoration] Front: signed "Fred Roe" Title: Handwritten "How far that little candle throws his beams" [Line taken from Merchant of Venice Act V sc 1] continues "so shines a good deed in a naughty word" Back: label reads: "Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 195, Piccadilly, London W.1. No. 1 The Lighted Gateway Westminster School Fred Roe R.I. 18, Stanford Road, Kensington Court, W8, Price 40s ."

Extract from The Elizabethan (1925):
"It represents the entrance to Yard by the Master's Common Room, in the light of the lamp under the arch. Unlike several recent etchings of the School buildings, which have been content with greater or less skill to depict the facts, the artist has in this case made a definite attempt to portray the spirit of an old building at its best and most peaceful moment, a winter evening. How far he has succeeded we hope our readers will judge for themselves, for it is a picture which deserves to be in the hands of all who love the Westminster of reality more than the Westminster of the guide books."

Extract from a review referred to in The Elizabethan (1925):
"All the oldest of the School buildings are constructed from remnants of the monastic structures, among the most noteworthy being the gateway depicted in the water-colour by Mr. Fred Roe, R.I. Built by Abbot Litlington in the second half of the 14th century, the gateway, as the main connecting link between the School and the outer precincts, has been one of the dearest recollections of countless generations of Westminsters. Consider the illustrious dead who have helped to tread away its stones! Ben Jonson, Cowley, Dryden, Matthew Prior, Cowper, Southey; Locke and Gibbon; Sir Christopher Wren; Warren Hastings and Sir Elijah Impey; Lords Combermere and Raglan; Sir Edward Poynter, P.R.A.; Gustave Hamel; represent but a fraction of the famous O.WW. who passed and re-passed beneath its vaulting. Add to these the names of statesmen like Earl Russell; of Churchmen like Atterbury; bishops and archbishops (as the late Mr. John Sargeaunt so well put it) "too numerous to mention, Lord Mansfield and Charles Wesley too great to omit"; and some idea can be formed of the intimate importance to Westminsters of this historic pile.

Mr. Fred Roe's drawing of the gateway shows it in what is perhaps its most picturesque aspect, with the familiar lamplight forming a striking contrast to the falling darkness. To attain this effect on the spot was a task of no mean order, but that the artist has succeeded admirably in conveying its air of mystery and studious calm is never for a moment in doubt. The essential Westminster atmosphere is sympathetically interpreted, while to link the past with the present Mr. Roe has introduced the figures of a King's Scholar and a Town Boy as they are to-day. Behind them, in dim silhouette, appears one of that brilliant succession of Masters who, from Camden and Busby onwards, have helped to shed the light of the School over so many climes and centuries."