Still Life: Flowers on a Table depicts a tasteful arrangement of flowers and tableware, illuminated by daylight cast from the right-hand side. The light plays over a small red vase in the foreground, producing highlights in the glaze at the vase’s shoulder. A decorated bowl behind the vase, partially concealed by the spray of flowers and herbage, is lit around the base and shaded inside. To the left, a pepper pot with a gleaming silver top is set close beside a glass vase of white flowers. The pepper pot catches the light, while the glass vase is caught behind a shadow cast by the ceramic to its right. The white flowers play against the pale table linen behind (possibly a napkin). The penumbra of shadow, the highlights and half tones are acutely observed, the paint manipulated fastidiously to evoke each effect. The picture was presumably painted from life and the table top is pictured from an elevated perspective as the artist looked down at it. This contributes a gentle element of formality to the composition: the table, covered with a blue cloth, goes towards the top edge of the picture but stops short of it, producing a clean horizon at the upper edge. The play of light over the blue cloth, varying from deepest shadow to brilliant highlight, is captured with rich, carefully modulated colouring.

The dating of Gilman’s work is notoriously difficult. He only rarely dated his work and did not keep a record of his output. In cases where there is an absence of secondary evidence, his work is typically dated on stylistic grounds. The art historian and Camden Town Group specialist Dr Wendy Baron has dated Still Life: Flowers on a Table to 1911-1912. The paint surface is finely detailed and impasto is used sparingly. Up until 1908 or so, Gilman’s lightly-handled naturalism was pleasantly refined, redolent of contemporary New English Art Club painting, which accorded with the domestic Edwardian interiors he depicted. His palette brightened considerably around 1910 or so, and during the Camden Town Group years (between 1911 and 1913) his paintings were marked by a Sickertian scrubbiness. From 1914 onwards, Gilman used enriched, glutinous impasto and a pattern of loaded brushstrokes. Notwithstanding the painterly textures and bright palette of Still Life: Flowers on a Table, the imagery is closely connected with refined domestic still life subjects of 1909/1910.

Another work, Still Life (fig. 1), uses the same tasteful arrangement of ceramics, tableware and flowers. These two middle-period still life paintings by Gilman are markedly different from later teatime still lifes. The quality of the still life objects themselves speak of a certain refinement, consistent with paintings produced in the Edwardian years by other distinguished artists such as William Nicholson. A restricted light source was particularly appropriate for glazed ceramics, silverware, glassware and mirrors, which were activated by a superficial reflective gleam. The profusion and elaborate arrangement of decorative objects is particularly telling. Later on, from 1916 until his death in 1918, Gilman returned to the theme of still life, treating less formal arrangements of teacups and saucers, tea pots, and fruit dishes. His newly post-impressionist manner of painting, constructed from a mosaic of impasto touches, gave a striking formal solidity to these latter still life paintings, in contrast to the spatial complexity and subtle handling of works like Still Life: Flowers on a Table.

Writing in March 1982, Baron described how ‘in recent years Gilman's qualities have been reassessed until he has emerged as perhaps the most distinguished of the younger painters who grew to maturity under the wing of Sickert within the Fitzroy Street and Camden Town Groups, and then broke away to explore their individual responses to French post-impressionism.’ More recently, Gilman’s reputation has been further enhanced by a centenary exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, and the Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham. Paintings like Still Life: Flowers on a Table demonstrate his talent as a painter and the unfailing attractiveness of his art.