This drawing portrays Robert’s father, William sitting in a lawn chair in his backyard in Mt. Denson, a hillside property that slopes down to the Avon River. The image may have been inspired by Edward Hopper’s People in the Sun, 1960, though Robert has replaced the crowd of sitting people with a solitary figure. Beneath the drawing Robert has written the caption, “Watching the river flow,” as well as an idea for an unrealized project, “A series of family portraits.” William is portrayed here as a man contemplating nature on his own terms, a casually dressed but enthroned property owner, his steadfast character contrasted with the fluctuating rhythms of the natural surrounding. Robert’s pen strokes are loosely applied, giving a breezy feeling to the scenery which contrasts with the strong sense of sunlight falling on the man with the hard arrow-shaped shadow underneath.

“Watching the River Flow” is the third of four drawings Robert did of his father over a ten year period. All of them show William seated. The first, drawn when Robert was still a teenager, shows William reading a newspaper, but nothing is visible of the man other than his hands and legs. The news acts as a screen preventing the viewer to have access to the man. The second portrait shows William from behind watching the news on TV. The third, showing William outdoors, is the first of Robert’s drawings to show his father from the front, with no interfering media. The final drawing shows William driving in a car, with his wife Isabel beside him. The landscape flashes by outside. The progression here is of a man obsessed with news, to a man more open to nature and others, to a man on a journey.