George Leslie Hunter (British, 1877-1931)
Still life with roses in a Chinese blue and white jar
signed 'Hunter' (lower right)
oil on canvas
49 x 39cm (19 5/16 x 15 3/8in).
Painted c.1916
Footnotes:
Provenance
With The Fine Art Society, London, (to 1972).
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, Gleneagles, 28 August 1984, lot 1103.
Dr Harold Schenberg; his sale, Christie's, Edinburgh, 1 November 2001, lot 93.
The late Sir John Craven (acquired at the above sale).

Hunter's early still lifes, characterised by formal arrangements and compositions set against a dark background, demonstrate the influence that 17th Century Dutch masters such as Willem Kalf had on his work. Here though we see him moving towards his own, painterly language.

The war years afforded Hunter time and opportunity to experiment. He was acquiring a deeper understanding and appreciation of contemporary French painting and began to use brighter colours in his still lifes. Hunter's notebooks clearly demonstrate that he was striving to apply the fundamentals of Post-Impressionism:

'Everyone, he [Van Gogh] says, must choose their own way and mine will be the way of colour. Colour, he writes, says something of itself, something over and above its other significance as the colour of some definite thing – one must not overlook that – one must use that.'
(Bill Smith and Jill Marriner, Hunter Revisited: The Life and Art of Leslie Hunter, Atelier Books, 2012, p. 65).