Despite only holding three exhibitions between 1911-12 The Camden Town Group – and the artists of its make-up – play a pivotal role in the understanding of early twentieth century art in Britain. Harold Gilman, Spencer Gore, Walter Sickert and their contemporaries looked not to lofty canons of British art history to reflect the harsh realities of their modern urban lives, but to the late nineteenth century French masters, the work of many of whom they were exposed to through Roger Fry’s seminal Post-Impressionist exhibitions at London’s Grafton Galleries in 1910 and 1912. Gilman, perhaps more so than his contemporaries, was aware of the contemporary art scene on the continent, having travelled in Europe soon after leaving the Slade in 1901. Visiting Paris, he also spent time in Spain, and there was drawn to the Spanish masters Velázquez and Goya. Back in London he became a founding member of the Fitzroy Street Group, which was soon superseded by the formation of The Camden Town Group. The artists painted urban life unfolding around them, the bustling North London street scenes and domestic interiors populated by unglorified working class men and women.

Whilst never working exclusively as a painter of still lifes as an artist Gilman is at his best when working in the genre. As William Nicholson’s breathtakingly delicate still life compositions of glass and silver celebrate the most ordinary of objects, Gilman’s compositions too draw out a narrative that glorifies the most humble of everyday objects. The artist’s most accomplished still lifes are those painted following his move to rented rooms at 47 Maple Street in 1914. Described by the art historian Dr Wendy Baron as ‘among the most instantly recognisable interiors in the history of art’ many of the paintings used his landlady as a subject – Interior (Mrs Mounter), 1917, (formerly in the collection of the late David Bowie, Fig.1) and Mrs Mounter at the Breakfast Table, circa 1916-7, (coll. Tate Gallery, London, Fig.2) – a painting that uses the same cup and saucer from the present work. Set against the pink diamond-patterned wallpaper, as seen in Roses in a Blue Vase, 1914-15 (Private Collection) and Mrs Victor Sly, 1914-15 (coll. The Hepworth Wakefield, Fig.3). In the present work pattern and colour take centre stage, with the white cup and saucer, flecked with soft lilac hues, set on an almost raked patterned sideboard that skews perception in a manner reminiscent of Vuillard. Behind the cup and saucer ornaments group together to further emphasise the domestic interior. The thicky impastoed surface owes much to the work of Van Gogh and is further emphasised by the formal patterning of the composition which focuses the viewer’s eye on the central subject in all its stark and simple elegance.

This is a painting so beautifully self-contained, humble and on such an intimate scale it showcases the great importance of Gilman as a artist of the period, made all the more tragic by his premature death at the hands of the influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1919. Owing to his premature death, Gillman’s artistic output is extremely small for an artist of such importance. Often collected by fellow artists – the present work first bought by fellow Camden Town Group artist Douglas Fox Pitt – many now reside in museum collections, positioning Gilman amongst those early pioneers that irrevocably shaped the course of the Modern British art scene.