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| Anna Zinkeisen Still Life of Flowers ca. 1930-40 oil on canvas Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend-on-Sea |
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| Edward Seago The Wild Beast Show 1932 oil on board Bristol Museum and Art Gallery |
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| Charles Maresco Pearce Still Life before 1938 oil on canvas The Hepworth, Wakefield, Yorkshire |
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| Victor Pasmore The Bradman Still Life ca. 1930 oil on canvas Leeds Art Gallery, Yorkshire |
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| Edward Hartley Mooney Roses and Venus ca. 1931 oil on canvas The Whitaker, Rossendale, Lancashire |
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| attributed to William Logsdail Still Life of Flowers in a Green Vase ca. 1935 oil on board National Trust, Greenway House, Devon |
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| Lynton Lamb Post Office Loading Platform 1939 oil on canvas The Postal Museum, London |
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| Frances Kelly Looking into the Garden ca. 1938 oil on canvas Ulster Museum, Belfast |
Wonders
In a wide hoop of lamplight, two children –
a girl and her younger brother – jump marbles
on a star-shaped playboard. Beside them,
in a chair near a window, their father
thinks of his mother, her recent death
and the grief he is trying to gather.
It is late October. The hooplight spreads
from the family, through the window,
to the edge of a small orchard, where
a sudden frost has stripped the fruit leaves
and only apples hang, heavy and still
on the branches.
The man looks from the window, down
to a scrapbook of facts he is reading.
The spider is proven to have memory, he says,
and his son, once again, cocks his small face
to the side, speaks a guttural oh, as if
this is some riddle he is slowly approaching,
as if this long hour, troubled with phrases
and the queer turn in his father's voice,
is offered as a riddle.
There is the sound of marbles
in their suck-hole journeys, and the skittery
jump of the girl's shoe
as she waits, embarrassed, for her father
to stop, to return to his known self, thick
and consistent as a family bread.
But still he continues,
plucking scraps from his old book, old
diary of wonders: the vanishing borders
of mourning paper, the ghostly shape
in the candled egg, beak and eye
etched clearly, a pin-scratch of claw.
A little sleet scrapes at the window.
The man blinks, sees his hand on the page
as a boy's hand, sees his children bent over
the playboard, with the careful pattern
of their lives dropping softly away, like
leaves in a sudden frost – how the marbles
have stalled, heavy and still on their fingers,
and after each phrase the guttural
oh, and the left shoe jumping.
– Linda Bierds (2008)
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| Valentine Dobrée Composition with Skull and Shells ca. 1930 oil on board Burton Gallery, University of Leeds |
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| William Coldstream At the Zoo 1930 oil on canvas The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent |
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| William Carter Still Life 1937 oil on canvas Museums Sheffield, Yorkshire |
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| Ethel Bristowe Dancer and Orchids with Curtain ca. 1930-40 oil on canvas Castle Douglas Art Gallery, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland |
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| Vanessa Bell Window, Still Life ca. 1930 oil on canvas The Wilson, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire |
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| Romek Árpád Still Life ca. 1937 oil on canvas Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne |
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| James Bell Anderson Still Life ca. 1932 oil on canvas Glasgow Museums |