Duncan Grant

(British, 1885-1978)

Still life with bottle and glass 50.2 x 45.2 cm. (19 3/4 x 17 3/4 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
With Anthony d'Offay, London
Acquired by the present owner from the 1982 exhibition, thence by descent
Private Collection, Australia

Exhibited
Sydney, David Jones Art Gallery, Paintings and Works on Paper by Duncan Grant, 16 July-14 August 1982, cat.no.3

The present work was painted at Charleston.

This two-sided work captures the stylistic changes that occurred in Duncan Grant's work between 1915 and 1918-19. On the reverse is a still life, probably painted in Grant's studio at 22 Fitzroy Street. Among the items it depicts is a vessel from Tunis, decorated by Grant on a visit to North Africa in 1914 (now at Charleston) and a tall white vase made by Roger Fry for the Omega Workshops. The prominent alarm clock is probably the first depiction of such an object in painting, and which was not then in common use. The improvised nature of the picture is underlined by the ruffled cloth or paper underneath the objects.

The later still life is one of several from circa 1918-20 that show objects carefully arranged on table tops whose polished surfaces provide sometimes complex reflections. The bulbous glazed terracotta ewer appears in several of Grant's still lifes at this period, supplying contrast to the slender verticals of, as here, the glass, circular tin and bottle. The background is not easy to read but might be a curtain or hanging cloth or even part of a specifically decorative work by Grant.

A group of such still lifes was included in Grant's first solo exhibition held in early 1920 at the Carfax Gallery. All showed a new attention to the compact relationship of objects, their relief and solidity. Much of the colourful lyrical quality of his earlier still lifes was jettisoned in favour of a tighter, less explicitly linear handling. At the time, some admirers of Grant's work confessed to some regret at this change in direction. Roger Fry, for example, wrote of the loss of Grant's spontaneous self-revelation in his 'intense effort to push his art further, to amplify, solidify and deepen the expression of his vision'. But once Grant had mastered this change, he re-introduced a brighter palette and produced some his most individual still lifes of the 1920s.

We are grateful to Richard Shone for compiling this catalogue entry.