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| Arthur Studd The Mauve Hat ca. 1900-1910 oil on panel Tate Gallery |
"In the spring of 1966 the donor visited the artist's nephew, Sir Eric Studd,with a photograph of this portrait. Sir Eric and his wife identified the sitter as Mrs. Studd, and the donor assumed it was the artist's wife. When it was acquired by the Tate Gallery it took the title of The Artist's Wife, since the dealers had not provided a title when they sold it. Information held in the Tate Gallery's file on Arthur Studd, provided by a cousin of the artist, reveals that Studd remained a bachelor all his life. It is therefore possible that Sir Eric Studd and his wife, when identifying the sitter as Mrs. Studd, meant the mother of the artist."
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| Henri Matisse Studio Interior ca. 1903-04 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"This painting shows a corner of Matisse's apartment at 19 Quai St. Michel, Paris, where he lived from 1899 to 1907. The subjects of domestic interiors and still lifes (in this painting a carefully arranged still life of a vase of flowers, jugs, a glass containing a long spoon and a lemon) were typical of Matisse's works of around the turn of the century. Matisse attended drawing and sculpture classes from 1899 to 1904, and much of his work in this period focuses on subject matter arising from his studio practice. A photograph taken in this period shows Matisse in his studio with many of the objects recorded in this painting, including the sculpture stand on which the still life rests, and the sculpture casts, by Matisse himself, on top of the cabinet."
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| Edouard Vuillard The Laden Table ca. 1908 pastel Tate Gallery |
"The scene is set in the Vuillard drawing room, 26 rue de Calais, Paris, where the artist moved with his mother in 1907. His niece Annette Roussel, in a white pinafore, stands at the table, where she is doing her lessons. Her brother Jacques is at the window, looking out. On the right is the silhouette of Mme. Vuillard. The picture on the wall in a frame is a portrait of Vuillard by Felix Vallotton painted in 1897. Although he frequently used friends or family as models, Vuillard said, 'I don't make portraits. I paint people in their homes."
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| George Clausen A Frosty March Morning 1904 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Frank Cowper Lucretia Borgia reigns in the Vatican in the absence of Pope Alexander VI 1908-14 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"This is a recreation of an obscure and scandalous incident from the history of the Popes. In 1501 the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia Borgia, took his place at a meeting. Frank Cowper has invented this suggestive moment in which two nobleman part Lucrezia's dress so that a Franciscan friar can kiss her shoe. The room in the Vatican in which Lucrezia Borgia appeared still exists. It was decorated by the Italian Renaissance artist Pinturicchio. Cowper went there to copy it and painted the faces of the Cardinals from their surviving portraits."
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| Pablo Picasso Bust of a Woman 1909 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Maurice Utrillo La Porte Saint-Martin ca. 1910 oil on panel Tate Gallery |
"The Porte Saint-Martin is a triumphal arch erected by the City of Paris in 1674 in honour of Louis XIV. The painting shows it from the centre of the Rue Saint Martin, a very busy street, which suggests that it was not painted on the spot but from a picture postcard. Utrillo began working from picture postcards in 1909, which accounts for certain peculiarities in the picture itself – the arch appears to be partly embedded between the buildings at the back, whereas in fact it is free-standing and has a main road passing behind it. This is the kind of distortion which could easily come about when working from a photograph, which tends to flatten the space. The artist has eliminated ornament and accessories throughout, giving the forms greater starkness and simplicity."
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| Georges Braque Glass on a Table 1909-10 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Georges Braque Bottle and Fishes ca. 1910-12 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Charles Ginner Piccadilly Circus 1912 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"Piccadilly Circus was London's busiest intersection and by 1910 was already dominated by its famous illuminated advertisements. Ginner's view shows at the right the island pavement around the base of Alfred Gilbert's statue of Eros, where a coster woman is seated on a stool selling flowers from two baskets. The feeling that the flower seller is imprisoned by motor cars and buses is emphasised by the low view point of the composition, while the passing bus advertises the latest music hall show."
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| Charles Ginner Victoria Embankment Gardens 1912 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"The style of this painting, with heavy outlines around islands of green, blue and yellow, was a departure for Ginner, and not repeated so far as is known. In his appreciation of Harold Gilman, Ginner mentions that they discussed the paintings by Vincent van Gogh they had seen in a private collection in Paris. The visit was probably made in the early autumn of 1910. The art historian Wendy Baron considers that Ginner's change in style in Victoria Embankment Gardens resulted from a renewed interest in van Gogh following this visit, and that he probably deliberately studied and imitated the Dutch artist's painting as a way of escaping from the laborious application of paint in his other works of the period."
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| Paul Nash The Pyramids in the Sea 1912 ind and watercolor on paper Tate Gallery |
"This is one of Nash's first imaginative drawings, produced when he was twenty-three. The mood recalls the spiritual landscapes of William Blake. It has been suggested that for Nash, as for Blake, the pyramid was a symbol of the ascent from the earthbound to the spiritual realm, or from chaos to form."
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| Duncan Grant Head of Eve 1913 oil on panel Tate Gallery |
"Grant appears not to have exhibited Head of Eve when it was newly painted. The first time it was brought to public notice was as an illustration in Roger Fry's 1923 book on the artist. It is most likely a study for the artist's large canvas, Adam and Eve. That work, exhibited at the Alpine Club Gallery, London in 1914, is now lost, and known only from an old photograph. For the art historian Richard Shone, Adam and Eve and Head of Eve reveal Grant's interest in a wide range of stylistic sources: 'borrowings and influences – from the Byzantine, from Picasso, from Persian miniatures, from newspaper photographs and contemporary life, from Matisse, the Bible and the early Italians."
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| Henry Lamb Lytton Strachey 1914 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"Giles Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), the critic and biographer and an important member of the Bloomsbury Group, sat for this imposing portrait some years before he became famous with such books as Eminent Victorians (1918), Queen Victoria (1921) and Elizabeth and Essex (1928)."
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| Walter Sickert Belvedere, Bath ca. 1917 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
– quoted passages from notes by curators at the Tate in London