 Roberts himself preferred the description "Cubist" for his work of this period.Two large-scale oil paintings exhibited in the 1917 Penguin Club Vorticist exhibition in New York, and purchased by John Quinn, were subsequently lost, but the radical nature of Roberts's "Cubist style" is evidenced by "The Toe Dancer" (owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum) and the recently rediscovered "Boxers" – both exhibited with the London Group in 1915.In 1916 Roberts enlisted in the Royal Regiment of Artillery as a gunner, serving on the Western Front in the Ypres sector, north of the Menin Road and at Arras.