Robert places a figure inside and outside a simple rectangular box to suggest ideas of entrapment. The Study for Phone Booth uses symmetrical elements: the booth is placed in the centre of the composition with the two sides of the box serving as mirrors of one another. The figure, crowded into one side of the box, disrupts this balanced arrangement. The dramatic block of night sky blends indistinguishably into the shadow of the figure.

In The Study for Pagan Martyr, on the right, Robert treats a modernist building in the same way as the phone booth. It’s a simple vertical block, seen with its corner projecting outward like a wedge toward the figure. The heavy shadow, in both building and woman, creates a polar relationship between right and left. Robert contrasts this emphasis on geometry with the emotion displayed by the woman. She hides her face as she cries, but she is clearly in a public place.

To the right, a tiny marginal sketch in blue pen shows the woman’s form extending outside the building. This makes the woman seem even more like a giantess, but loses the feeling that her form is contained within the rectangular shape.