Still Life - The Dinner Table
- Artist: Duncan Grant
- Date: c. 1912
- Medium: oil and graphite on paper on cardboard
- Museum: The Courtauld Gallery
- Collection record: The Courtauld Gallery website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the Still Life – The Dinner Table by Duncan Grant. Painted around 1912, it’s an oil and graphite on paper on cardboard that feels almost tactile, like you could reach out and feel the paper’s texture beneath the paint.
Grant was chasing the new wave of colour and form that Paul Cézanne had unleashed in early exhibitions curated by Roger Fry in 1910 and 1912. In this piece he copies Cézanne’s signature short, parallel brushstrokes, but with a twist: instead of depicting a kitchen or a banquet, he turns the table into an abstract landscape. Every fruit, plate, and napkin is broken into jagged planes of colour that jostle against one another, almost as if the table is a map of an uncharted terrain.
Notice how the graphite lines cut through the paint, adding depth and structure while the oil keeps the hues vibrant and slightly translucent. The composition feels both familiar and alien—there’s the comfort of a dinner scene, yet the arrangement feels like a surreal patchwork quilt of light and shadow. It’s a snapshot of early 20th‑century modernism, where artists like Grant were redefining what a still life could be.
See it in person
Still Life - The Dinner Table hangs in The Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House, London. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
