Roger Fry. To publicise his own work he also published Some Early Abstract and Cubist Work 1913–1920 (London, 1957), the first of a series of collections of reproductions of his paintings, with somewhat polemical prefaces. Late recognition In 1958 Roberts was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, and two years later, when he turned 65, he retired from his one-day-a-week teaching position at the Central School. However, his output as an artist over the next fifteen years remained prolific. In 1961 he was given an award by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation "in recognition of his artistic achievement and his outstanding service to British painting". In that same year he began painting The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, Spring 1915 (completed 1962; now in the Tate Gallery), a nostalgic recollection of a boisterous Vorticist gathering in 1915 that can be read as an attempt by Roberts to build bridges following the "Vortex Pamphlets" debacle. A major retrospective of his work, organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain and curated by Ronald Alley, opened at the Tate Gallery in 1965, and a smaller version was also shown in Newcastle and Manchester. In the same year Roberts was offered, but rejected, an OBE. He was, however, pleased to be elected a full member of the Royal Academy in 1966. While still tackling a variety of subjects, Roberts became somewhat obsessed with the self-portrait, and a number of his self-portraits would be exhibited by the National Portrait Gallery in 1984. Roberts was often described as reclusive, and he was very wary about interviewers – especially after an Observer journalist who visited him produced an article that Roberts felt was concerned more with his rather spartan lifestyle than with his work. "What kind of art critic is this, who sets out to criticise my pictures, but criticises my gas stove and kitchen table instead?" he asked. In 1974 the Arts Council exhibition "Vorticism and Its Allies", curated by Richard Cork, recognised Roberts's important role within the group; however, when Cork approached him for an interview Roberts was uncooperative. Unsurprisingly, in his eighties Roberts's draughtsmanship deteriorated, but he continued working until the end – Donkey Rides was "pinned to his drawing board on the day on which he died [20 Jan. 1980]". The fate of his estate Sarah Roberts died in 1992 and her and William's son, John, died two and