Pink Roses in a glass vase

The fruit dish and glass vase, as well as roses, appear in many still life paintings by Peploe for well over a decade. This particular still life probably dates from the later 1920s when he was completely revising the use of tone and colour and also using much looser brushwork. It makes an interesting comparison with his Pink Roses in a blue and white Vase with Oranges and a Jug (lot 183) which relies on far higher tonalities and a dominant sense of decorative patterning across the canvas. Now reducing form to its essentials, Peploe is concerned above all with the intellectual, formal values of the elements in his composition.

E.C.