Mary Fedden OBE RA LG 1915-2012

Red Still Life with Hopjes Tin, 1972

Oil on canvas
24 x 30 ins (60.96 x 76.20 cms)
Signed and dated

Price on application

Provenance

Private Collection

Literature

MARY FEDDEN by Mel Gooding, Scholar Press, 1995. Illustrated page 32.

General Notes

Hopjes is the trade name for a type of coffee toffee made in Holland. It was a favourite sweet of Mary Fedden's husband Julian Trevelyan. She uses an empty Hopjes tin as he focal point of this 1972 painting.

This is considered to be an important painting, as many of the components which would feature in Fedden's later style can be seen in this work. Mel Gooding discusses this painting at length in his best-selling 1995 book on the artist. He comments on the unmixed chromatic colour, the scatter of separated objects across the pictorial stage without regards for rules of perspective and the schematic flatting of objects, often chosen for their decorative appeal.