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Duncan Grant painted this canvas from his countryside home, Charleston Farmhouse, during the Second World War. Paintings of still-lifes and domestic scenes became increasingly common in Grant’s oeuvre throughout this period, not only out of necessity but seemingly as a means of escape from the chaos of conflict.

Duncan Grant was a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, a collective of artistic individuals who embraced an unrestricted and bohemian lifestyle. As conscientious objectors during the First World War, Grant moved from London to a farmhouse in East Sussex with artist Vanessa Bell and writer David Garnett. After a short period as an official war artist in 1940, Grant again returned to Charleston for the duration of the Second World War. Safe in the Sussex countryside, Grant concerned himself entirely with the depiction of natural beauty.

Nature and flowers were lifelong interests of Grant and take charge as the central subject matter in many works. These flowers were likely cut from Charleston’s immaculate garden which, despite the government's 'Dig for Victory' campaign between 1939 and 1945, remained a consistently cultivated luxury for the inhabitants. Applied in thick impasto, the unrestrained gesticulations of oil paint serve in elevating this modern masterpiece to a plane in which it can compete with even the most imposing old masters. In fact, this work is distinguishable within Grant’s oeuvre of the 1940s. He has momentarily done away with the more illustrative qualities apparent in many of his works at this time and indulges in the power of paint to convey mood and emotion. The rich crimson background offers an esoteric backdrop from which the Chrysanthemums in the foreground spring forward. In 1944, a number of flower pictures by Grant – noted for their ‘exuberant use of colour’ - were exhibited at 26 Castle Street, Edinburgh in a show dedicated to French and British artists including Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Édouard Vuillard, and Mathew Smith.[1]

Painted during the same year that Grant and Bell were working on the Berwick church murals, and the same year as Raymond Mortimer’s publication of Duncan Grant, 1944 was a year of tremendous artistic output for Grant. This still-life is indicative of his unwavering artistic invention and constant production, despite the volatile global climate. Revealing in its rousingly powerful colours, this still life injects vitality and momentum into Grant’s later oeuvre.

[1] ‘French and British Art’, The Scotsman, 9 December 1944, p.8.