The Glass Cup depicts a goblet on a polished table set before a fabric backdrop with an arabesque design. An apple is on the table at the bottom right-hand corner. The arabesque pattern is mirrored in the polished surface of the table. The composition uses an elevated perspective, which flattens together the objects, backdrop and table surface. They occupy the same plane, although a sense of recession from the front edge of the table back towards the fabric behind is apparent. The handling of paint enhances the sense of spatial flatness; the paint was applied in flat, loaded strokes of the brush and covers the canvas in an even, uniform surface, which produces a solid, planar mosaic of colour. Gradations of light and shadow were achieved by modulating neighbouring areas of paint, with the same hue carefully graded to produce lighter and darker tones, as with the blue of the cup.

The goblet in The Glass Cup can be identified as a specific object now in the Charleston Trust’s collection. It appears in at least one other painting by Grant. This receptacle dates to the nineteenth century and has a distinctive and elaborately moulded stem. It is made of milk glass—a translucent material reminiscent of porcelain—and decorated with a thick band of gilding round the rim, which is clearly visible in Grant’s painting. Grant and Bell moved to Charleston Farmhouse, near Lewes in East Sussex, in September 1916, and they decorated and furnished the house in a richly eclectic style entirely novel for its period. They used a mixture of outmoded Victorian fabrics and furniture, eclectic objets acquired variously from the Omega Workshops (of which they were both company directors) and as gifts from friends, and hand-decorated inventions of their own, especially on the walls, firescreens and other semi-permanent fittings. This environment became a key component of both Grant and Bell’s still-life paintings, with objects and their settings translated into pictorial terms. Their unusual, visually interesting possessions and the interior spaces they crafted at Charleston were essential ingredients in their creative endeavour, and Grant’s painting The Glass Cup and others like it belong to a broad spectrum of artistic activity.

Duncan Grant’s first solo exhibition was held at the Carfax Gallery in 1920, and The Glass Cup was likely included in that display. An inscription on the reverse of the canvas confirms that it was painted in 1919, and this date corroborates with the style of the painting. Around 1917 or 1918, Grant’s style changed. Where he previously used a broken web of bright, pastel colours, applied in a variety of gestural styles, The Glass Cup was painted in his new idiom: a lower key using colours of brown, umber and red; a tonal approach to colour, rather than the use of pure colour; thicker paint textures, applied with a firm, flattened touch; directional handling of paint to create surface patterning; and a more naturalistic treatment of the subject motivated by life study and using conventional single-point perspective.

This painting was owned by Duncan Grant’s cousin James Strachey (1887–1967) and his wife Alix (née Sargant-Florence) (1892–1973). Both James and Alix were psychoanalysts and translators, and they were especially noted for translating the works of Sigmund Freud. James was ‘a close companion’ of Grant’s having attended the same schools (Hillbrow preparatory; Rugby; St Paul’s, London). Like Grant, James Strachey was a conscientious objector in the Great War, and James and Alix were later friends with Grant and his partner Vanessa Bell whom they often met and dined with. James and Alix married in 1920 and it is possible that this painting, executed in 1919, was given to them as a wedding present; no documentary evidence exists about the circumstances of the painting’s acquisition by the Stracheys, however. It remained in the Strachey family until 2024.