The fusion of abstraction and figuration in Grant’s work around the time of this painting was an attempt to reconcile his spontaneous lyrical gift (as seen in his Omega designs) with a more austere sense of discrete form. Here a shallow spatial recession is established by the geometric abstraction at left cutting in front of the elliptical glass vase of stylised flowers. The écriture behind the vase was used frequently by Grant at this moment – flat yet painterly – and occurs most fully in his and Bell’s wall panels for Maynard Keynes’s rooms in Cambridge (see no XX) from two or three years later. Botanically improbable flowers appear in Grant’s decorative designs throughout his career. [Richard Shone]