All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French

Mark Gertler’s Still Life with Melon, 1908

Posted: August 12th, 2014 | No Comments »

I love it when I come across a Chinese related reason that provides an excuse to show an image by a favourite artist who I might not otherwise have got to show on this blog. And so with Mark Gertler (British painter, avowed Londoner, East End Jew) and his 1908 oil on canvas painting Still Life with Melon, which won him a bronze medal in a Board of Education National Competition. This was an early painting, while Gertler was working at the stained glass company Clayton and Bell after having attended art classes at the Regent Street Polytechnic (and about the time he began attending the Slade). Now Gertler had no particular interest in China, or Chinoiserie or anything Oriental as far as I know, but in Still Life with Melon a blue and white China plate appears.

Where these random objects came from seems to be lost to history. However, Gertler often painted at his mum’s house in Spitalifields so maybe she had Chinese tastes or these were just items about the Slade in 1908.

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