Still Life with Glass Jar and Silver Box
- Artist: Winifred Gill
- Date: 1914
- Medium: oil 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 with Glass Jar and Silver Box by Winifred Gill. The canvas is actually a piece of cardboard that was once the top of a laundry box, and the painting sits there as if it were a private note tucked into a household item. The box bears a label dated 12 November 1914, a date that anchors the work in the middle of the First World War and hints at the everyday life that surrounded this artist’s practice.
For a long time people thought the painting was by Duncan Grant, partly because the style mirrors his light‑touch, almost child‑like handling of objects. However, the address of the laundry—right next to Gill’s own home in Sussex—makes a strong case for her authorship. It also explains why the piece fits so neatly into the visual language of the Omega Workshops in London, an avant‑garde collective that encouraged designers to experiment with form and colour across different media.
Gill was more than just a painter in that circle; she ran the salesrooms, coordinated production, and contributed many of the designs that helped keep the workshops alive. Oil on cardboard gives the work a tactile immediacy that feels both fragile and sturdy, echoing the dual nature of everyday objects and artistic ambition in the early twentieth‑century British scene.
See it in person
Still Life with Glass Jar and Silver Box 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.
