Duncan Grant (1885-1978)

This painting belongs to a series of still lifes of circa 1918-20 in which Grant often adopts a low viewpoint, affording him a variety of spatial effects. Here he appears to be looking up at a double-table top with what seems to be a stretcher to the right. The work is exemplary of Grant’s change of manner at the time, in which the vivid Post-Impressionist colour and handling of still lifes of the 1914-18 period, such as Still Life on a Mantelpiece, 1914 (Tate, London) have become much more controlled and the tonal range more subdued but none the less rich in impact. The objects depicted in these works are carefully placed, with calculated intervals, as opposed to the more random, overlapping groups of objects of earlier still lifes. Such gravity and simplicity were maintained until circa 1924-25 when there is a return to a higher colour key and calligraphic handling of paint.

We are very grateful to Richard Shone for preparing this catalogue entry.