John Armstrong was born in 1893 in Hastings. He studied at St. John’s College, Oxford, 1912-13, and then at St. John’s Wood School of Art 1913-14. During the war he served in the Royal Field Artillery 1914-19, before briefly returning to St. John’s Wood School. He began his professional career as a theatre designer in London, gaining important patrons including Lillian and Samuel Courtauld, who commissioned Armstrong to decorate a room in their Portman Square home. His first solo exhibition was at the Leicester Galleries in 1928. In 1933 he joined Unit One alongside Ben Nicholson, Paul Nash, Edward Burra, Henry Moore, Edward Wadsworth, John Bigge and Barbara Hepworth, with whom he exhibited at the Unit One exhibition. From the early 1930s onwards his work became Surrealist in style – uncanny, romantically dream-like and heavily imbued with symbolism. Armstrong died in 1973. His work is held in numerous international public collections including the Tate, the Imperial War Museum, and the National Galleries of Scotland. John Armstrong painted still-life scenes throughout his career - some of his most striking early paintings were of classical vases decorated with animals and figures from the ancient world. After the breakdown of his second marriage and subsequent move from Cornwall to London in 1956, Armstrong turned to still-life as his primary genre of painting. Continuing the modern tradition of approaching still-life with a modernist viewpoint, exploring what and how we see through a domestic tableau, Armstrong calls to this art historical genre with a firmly modern perspective. Armstrong initially stayed with the Bevans in London, where he met his third wife Annette, and here began painting still-lifes in earnest. Writing in an article, 'Painter's Purpose' for The Studio magazine in March 1958, Armstrong described its significance: "The representation of objects seen or imagined is necessary to me, not for the objects themselves but for certain of their material qualities or for their power of emotional suggestion. The material qualities that attract me to particular objects are those of convexity, concavity and flatness. Anything through which these can be clearly expressed and contrasted will serve to try to resolve the conflict between pattern and tactile form which is to me one of the most absorbing of the conflicts of art." In 'Pears and Jug' both pattern and tactile form are paramount to the balanced composition of the painting and to its exquisite decorative quality. The central coffee jug is flanked by two half and one whole pear, and the objects are atop in a rumpled blue tablecloth. To the top right a light blue curtain just hangs over the edge of the painting. In the simple, harmonious and balanced composition, curved forms echo one another - the bulging base, spout and handle of the coffee pot, the hang of the curtain, the pears seen from different angles. The elegant patterning of the painting is complemented by an appealing texture to the surface. Painting in oil, Armstrong achieves his idiosyncratic chalky, tesserae-like surface. Laying touches of paint over a dark brown surface, these small dabs of colour invigorate the surface with a vibrancy and animation. The tonal depth of overlaid colours produces a beautiful luminosity to the painting - the cream of the coffee pot seems to emanate a warm light.