The death of Harold Gilman in 1919 deprived British art of a vital and significant presence. In the last decade of his life his work displayed an increasing engagement with French Post-Impressionist painting and he developed a style quite unlike his erstwhile mentor, Walter Richard Sickert, and other Camden Town artists.

With his particular use of colour and paint, Gilman’s images offer a highly individual view of modern urban life. His work has a powerful presence and realism, yet it remains enigmatic. In much of his mature painting, and especially the important group of works depicting his housekeeper Mrs. Mounter, Gilman created a distinctive vocabulary to explore the interiors and people living in London during the First World War.

Image: Interior with Mrs. Mounter 1916-17, oil on canvas, by Harold Gilman. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

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