Victor Pasmore 1908-1998

Although not listed in the catalogue raisonné of the artist’s works, Still Life with Flowers appears to relate very closely to Everlasting Flowers  (Private Collection) of 1946, and it is thus reasonable to assume a similar date of execution. It would therefore belong to a group of still life paintings of flowers that begin about five years previously.

Seen as one of the leading figurative painters of the 1930s and early 1940s, Pasmore had found himself increasingly drawn towards the theories of abstraction, and in his paintings of 1945-46, such as The Evening Star: Effect of Mist (Private Collection), the artist’s interest in the abstract possibilities of his subject is clear. Whilst the present painting retains a broadly figurative structure, the artist’s manipulation of the surface gives the painting a sense of uniformity thus giving equal compositional value to each element and reducing the pictorial emphasis. The regular spacing of the ladder-back chair behind the case of flowers also offers an indication of subdivision of the picture plane in a way that would become more pronounced in the first fully abstract paintings Pasmore was to produce the following year, and thus we may see the present work as one of the last figurative paintings by the artist, but which clearly carries within it the seed of abstraction.

The former owner of this painting was Lord Dacre of Glanton, the historian and author who worked under the name Hugh Trevor-Roper. His wife, Lady Alexandra Howard-Johnston, was the daughter of the late Field-Marshall Earl Haig.