Mark Gertler executed two versions of Vase with Flowers in 1925. Both were clearly executed at the same time. The other work is titled as Bouquet of Flowers (fig. 1) and has the same measurements as Vase with Flowers. This second version was purchased by the Government Art Collection from the Leicester Galleries in 1959. At least one other flower still life by Gertler has been dated to 1925, Still Life with Dahlias and Chrysanthemums (1925, Private Collection). The two works are both clearly inscribed ‘1925’ and were probably painted while Gertler was staying at Frinton-on-Sea in Essex during August that year. While there, he wrote to his friend the Russian translator S.S. Koteliansky. ‘The last two days I have been absorbed in painting flower pieces – one each day – which means painting all day with hardly a stop. I have just finished my second’. The naturalism of these rapidly and exactingly executed flower pieces was remarkably uninhibited for Gertler; his later works often show signs of re-working, with the paint surface becoming ratcheted and uneven. By contrast, Vase with Flowers appears as fresh as the day it was painted – the impression of fragile blooms rendered in bright, persuasive colours. Both Vase with Flowers and Bouquet of Flowers depict the same fulsome bunch of summer flowers, including a rose, daisies, Gladioli and poppies, arranged in wide and squat ceramic vase. The background is brown in colour, lightening in the central passage of the picture behind the flowers and diminishing to shadow at the outer edges. The vase stands at the edge of an undressed wooden table top, which comes to an abrupt end before reaching the lower right-hand corner of the picture. A slight reflection of the vase shimmers at the central lower edge, suggesting that the wood surface may be polished. The Government Art Collection version was evidently painted second, when some flowers had withered slightly (the Helenium has lost some of its petals) and others had developed (the Gladioli have opened a little, for example). Despite his depressive character, Gertler enjoyed a modicum of professional success throughout the 1920s. In 1925, he was featured in Fleuron’s monograph series ‘British Artists of To-day’, the other subjects of which included Duncan Grant, Paul and John Nash, Gilbert Spencer and Frank Dobson. In response to his solo exhibition at the Goupil Gallery a few years earlier in 1921, an anonymous reviewer described Gertler as ‘a consummate artist who is fast learning to express himself in a highly personal and effective style. And if he has mannerisms they are rendered innocuous by a vast store of genuine originality’. Though his work was regularly exhibited throughout the period at the Goupil Gallery, a year before painting Vase with Flowers Gertler placed an advertisement for pupils in The Burlington Magazine – a hint to financial pressures which might in turn be related to his mental ill-health at the time. * The provenance of this work is Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London. The work was deaccessioned in 2018 as part of a wide ranging reassessment of its Collection and Collecting policies which addressed the modus operandi of this physically small scale institution resulting in their Sustainability and Public Benefit Strategy. Their revised, enlightened, strategic plan and core public benefit objectives drove their transformation into the first full scale virtual museum and research centre in 2019. Many works have been transferred free of charge to other museum collections and the funds raised from sales are being reinvested for the benefit of the charity in general funding new acquisitions and enhancing the museum’s research unit studying, and digitally recording, the Jewish and immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.