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Robert Polhill Bevan trained in Paris, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne, and then in Brittany, in a colony formed by Paul Gauguin. A cosmopolitan artist, Bevan moved to London but made long visits to Poland after marrying the Polish-born painter Stanislawa Karlowska in 1897. In France he had absorbed a postimpressionist style, and, back in London, he became a founding member of the Camden Town Group in 1911. His London studio looked out onto Cumberland Market, a straw market for urban horses. Bevan, a horse lover, sensed correctly that both the market and the horses would soon disappear with the advent of motor vehicles. This painting shows cart horses at the Cumberland Market represented through patches of broken color, a vision of the last days of traditional London captured in the most avant-garde style.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016