Interior was painted during a period of creative renewal in Paul Nash’s career, in which he sought to deepen his subject matter and create a more rigorous mode of representation. Where his previous work mostly used a naturalistic idiom, in 1928–29 he began to explore opaque symbolism and non-naturalistic pictorial devices. Interior exaggerates and heightens the commonplace subject-matter of the artist’s studio room. The narrow, upright composition uses a very shallow depth of field, which serves to intensify each element in the picture by means of claustrophobia. Even the narrow strip of steeply foreshortened wall is taut and visually poignant. The scene is unevenly illuminated, with one light source casting areas shadows behind the chair, bookcase and T-square, even as the narrow wall remains incongruously in the darkness. The shadows cast by furniture are substantial and have their own presence in the composition. In a late response to cubism, Nash was exploring a more critical construction of perspective in his pictures at this time, and Interior subtly incorporates multiple perspectives. So much is apparent from the foreshortened picture rail and skirting board, and the top and bottom edges of the bookcase respectively: the former are decidedly viewed from below and the latter from above, with each element steeply foreshortened to create a purposeful inconsistency.

In the late twenties, Nash’s artistic outlook changed and he began a concerted effort to develop his work. Describing this period in the notes for his unfinished autobiography, he wrote: ‘A new vision and a new style. The change begins.’ This development was partly informed by his exposure to the work of his friends and contemporaries Edward Wadsworth and Edward Burra, both of whom were working in a quasi-surrealist pictorial mode that charged objects with significance beyond superficial appearances. In Wadsworth’s case, arcane nautical ephemera—netting, seashells, marine propellers—were invested with immense grandeur and poignance. For Nash, his ‘change’ involved a similar journey to communicate the animated qualities of inanimate things. Discussing this period of Nash’s work, the art historian Andrew Causey described how ‘Nash’s painting moved rapidly in 1928–9 from popular landscape to emblematic representation’. In these new paintings, of which Interior is one example, Causey explained, ‘Nash sets puzzles. Imagery is complex and meanings hard to unravel, but he is challenging us to unravel them.’

Rather than seek out new and unfamiliar kinds of object as the vehicle for his ‘new vision’, Nash employed familiar—even commonplace—objects and set about evoking them as characterful beings in their own right. The protagonists depicted in Interior are a tall pink jug, filled with summer flowers that curl through the air with peculiar animation; two books beside the jug, propped up and standing without support; and a black T–square on the floor, which leans against the wall as if resting. A dining chair at the lower left-hand corner is partially covered with a white sheet, which provokes an uncanny allusion to a partially dressed body. Nash was actively developing roles for these protagonists in 1928–30, and they appear in a group of related paintings made in these years. The same bookcase is depicted in Still Life with Bog Cotton, the same large black T-square shows its head in Token, and other measuring implements—a wood T-square, a transparent set square, a ruler—are treated as central still-life figures in Dead Spring and Lares. The aura of rectilinear precision projected by these implements is also apparent in the execution of the work itself, and the bookcase and architectural features in Interior have the exactitude of ruler-drawn outlines. The ineffable strangeness of these paintings means that they bear only a loose connection to established genres, existing putatively within the bounds of still life and interior scenes even as they suggest more loaded thematic content.

Some of these paintings were made at Nash’s London flat at Queen Alexandra Mansions, Judd Street, just south of Euston Road in the upper reaches of Bloomsbury. This was the case for Lares and St Pancras (1927, The Wilson), which depicts a vase of flowers on a windowsill overlooking the St Pancras hotel. Other works including Interior may depict Nash’s home studio in the village of Iden, East Sussex; the pale gold walls and picture rail of Interior also appear in Still Life with Bog Cotton and Token. Although Nash’s interior/still life paintings largely ceased when he moved to New House, Rye, in December 1930, he continued to develop the imaginative quality of objects in his work. This theme culminated in Landscape of Bleached Objects (1934, Auckland Art Gallery) and Equivalents for the Megaliths (1935, Tate), for example, which explored the hidden lives of inanimate objects—geometric solids, flint, an egg—in landscape settings.

The canvas of Interior was supplied by the artists’ materials firm Newman of Soho Square. The company’s canvas stamp is visible on the reverse. This was his regular supplier and other paintings by Nash, ranging in date from 1924 to 1943, also bear Newman’s canvas stamp.

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Interior was sold by Arthur Tooth & Sons some time in the nineteen-thirties. It was exhibited in October 1931 at Tooth’s exhibition Recent Developments in British Painting but was not mentioned in Nash’s statement of account issued in November that year. It presumably sold after that. It was acquired by Barbara Gibbs (née Williams). She and her husband ‘dined and entertained’ with Dudley Tooth and his wife, and her brother David Williams worked at Tooth’s for seven years. In a memoir, she described the circumstances for her growing interest in acquiring art:

"Now he revived my interest in modern pictures and once again I began to go to exhibitions and galleries and occasionally to buy a painting. David helped me in every way: told me what to look out for and what he thought would interest me. With his exceptionally good eye and the advice he gave me I was able to buy a few very good pictures. […] I bought pictures because I liked them: because one particular painting appealed to me."

After Gibbs’s death, Interior was acquired from her estate by Bill and Cherry Palmer of Bussock Wood House, Berkshire. Cherry Gibbs was Barbara’s niece by marriage, and she married into the Palmer family—the biscuit dynasty whose wealth derived from the firm Huntley & Palmers.