For a brief three years beginning in 1933, Goodridge Roberts became the first artist-in-residence at Queen’s University. He went on to a distinguished career as a painter of landscapes, still-lifes and portraits. Born to a prominent literary family, Goodridge Roberts studied at Montreal’s École des Beaux Arts and at the Art Students’ League in New York with Max Weber and John Sloan. Robert’s still-lifes, such as this spectacular and large example, were the result of quiet contemplation – not of the subject, but of its careful interpretation in paint on the painting surface. Abstract questions of colour, tone, line and texture are the real subject and thus this work is much more Modernist than may first appear to be the case.