Flowers in a jug (1931)

'On the 24th April, 1931 Grace Smith died. ... Cossington Smith's artistic response to her mother's death was only in part elegiac. An aspect of festivity infuses a whole group of flowerpieces which issued as her grief subsided, indeed helped it to subside. These works exalt Nature and the life force in the face of mortality. They can be understood as poems to a departed parent, tokens of her continuation through her daughter's art. ... Even in compositions of cut flowers, for example Flowers in a Jug [the present lot] there is wildness and promiscuous growth, signifying regenerative power. Despite being cut the blooms gyrate in determined expressivity.' (B. James, op. cit., pp.86-90)