Robertsʼs career typified a phenomenon of professional British art history in the
early twentieth century,
whereby, according to
Brian Allen, “the study of historic British painting was almost entirely in the hands
of the art trade”.
Roberts ranked as a leading so‐called “expert” who worked with
London art dealers,
authoring pamphlets designed to sell individual paintings.
“These now rather rare and often sumptuous publications are invariably anonymous”,
Allen remarks,
“undoubtedly written by scholars who were cautious about protecting their anonymity”.
Although he and others like him operated outside the institutional art establishment,
“
Roberts . . . would, for five pounds, write certificates of authenticity for any
eighteenth‐century British picture placed in front of him”
(
Allen, “Paul Mellon and Scholarship in the History of British Art”, 45).