Sir Matthew Smith

Probably acquired in the 1920s by Sir Barnet Stross M.P., and thence by descent to the present owners

The board appears to be in very good original condition and is providing a sound support. Some very minor craquelure is visible in the more thickly painted upper left section of the central orange, but the paint surface appears to be entirely stable here and throughout. Inspection under UV light reveals two tiny spots of possible retouching- at the lower edge, just to the left of centre, and near the right edge at the corner of the tabletop. Presented behind glass in the original decorative gilt wood frame. The frame has suffered various chips and losses to the mouldings, and though structurally sound, the work would possibly benefit from re-framing.
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Smith had been based more or less permanently in France since around 1908, and during that time had worked mostly in Paris and Brittany. His early paintings were hard-won, with the artist frequently reworking his paintings, although many of the characteristics of his mature style were starting to come to the fore.

With the outbreak of WWI, Smith returned to London and took a studio at 2, Fitzroy Street. The artistic world to which he returned was very different to that he had left eight years earlier, and the influence of events such as Roger Fry’s notorious exhibitions of Post-Impressionism, the establishment of the Omega Workshop, the visits of the Ballets Russes, and the growth of Wyndham Lewis’ Vorticist movement made London a much more ‘modern’ city to which Smith seems to have responded immediately. In the autumn of 1914 and into 1915, Smith embarked on a group of paintings that instantly change the direction of his painting. A relatively small body of work, of which virtually all are in public collections, the paintings he produced during his ‘Fitroy’ period are a remarkable group, demonstrating a  boldness and verve that had been much less in evidence in France. Using a strong palette of primary colours, these works exhibit a feeling for colour that draws upon Smith’s experience of Fauvist painting, especially Matisse and Derain, but in their handling and flat areas of unmodulated colour, show something quite unlike anything being produced by his peers in London.

The present painting, which appears to be a larger and more fully resolved version of Fruit in a Dish (Collection Tate), incorporates areas of bold red and green parallel stripes which break over the edges of the dish, removing any sense of pure representation, and, like the magisterial Fitzroy Street Nude I (Collection Tate) and Fizroy Street Nude II (British Council Collection), mark a point on the path of Smith’s art that, whilst it would lead back towards figuration, set out his abilities as a painter of colour in a way that achieved the admiration of virtually all his generation.