This is Project 2, Death and the Maiden: probably Exhibition list No. 31. Pierrot and Jeny, dancing with Death. £36.

The pierrot suit, figuring also in several other paintings, was made by Myrna, the wife of Robert's close friend Aury Shoah.

Alice Lenkiewicz: There was also the toy jester with the innocent look, the gold bells hanging from its hat. Robert always kept it on top of the chest in the hallway. Robert was a huge follower of the fool the first image in the Major Arcana of the tarot cards. He even opened a shop called The Fool once. This was Robert's phase of the fool. He wore brightly coloured scarves; he painted objects in fluorescent pinks, oranges and yellows. His life at this time was a jingle of magic and foolery, his own invention of pnoob faces and silliness. Innocence was the word. The journey was the adventure. The unknown was exciting. Answers, facts, tradition and seriousness were unimportant. It was a time of fun and excitement. The importance was in the seeking not the finding. This was the era of the child, flowers, optimism, and irrationalism. In many ways he epitomised the flower child of the 60s. He was the ultimate in carnivalesque. He was the walking mad-man of the Barbican in Plymouth, the man who epitomised anti convention, the man with the wild hair, the cavalier boots, the velvet smock and the smell of oil paint about him covering his hands and clothes. He was seen as the laughing cavalier! (http://www.geocities.com/poetshideout/AliceLenkiewiczstory.html)

Robert Lenkiewicz (in 'A Portrait of Robert Lenkiewicz, White Lane Press 2005, p. xii): "It semed to me that these people (vagrants) fulfilled the same function in our society as the fools and jokers who wandered through mediaeval Europe. They remind too of the mediaeval dance of death - the people danced through the streets, dressed in shrouds and carrying visual reminders that death is all around us."