• A framed still life painting displayed on a white surface against a light gray wall. The artwork depicts a tabletop scene with a blue-and-white vase, a white globe lamp, and small bottles, enclosed in a white mat and a brown wooden frame.
  • An impressionistic oil painting of a still life interior scene, featuring a table with a blue and yellow patterned mirror, a white table lamp, a small brown bottle, and other household objects against a warm beige wall.
  • Close-up of the corner of a framed artwork, showing a distressed multi-layered wooden frame with gold leaf and reddish-brown tones, a cream mat, and a blue-gray abstract painting.
  • The back of a rustic wooden picture frame leaning against a white wall, with a cardboard backing secured by twine, styled with dried flowers on a white surface.
  • An impressionistic still life painting depicting a tabletop arrangement with a blue octagonal mirror, a white globe lamp, a brown bottle, and other neutral-toned objects against a warm beige wall.
  • A framed art print depicting a still life interior scene with a table, lamp, and blue-and-white vase, displayed on a white surface against a light wall.
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The Blue Loft

Vintage Still Life Painting of a Mantelpiece with Oil Lamp in Gilt Frame

£45.00
£45.00
Tax included. Shipping calculated at checkout.

An interior painted from life, almost certainly by someone sitting in their own front room. On a mantelpiece stand an oil lamp with a milky glass globe, a blue and white charger propped against the wall, a stoneware bottle, a couple of jars and a small wooden box, with a little seascape in an orange frame hanging above. It is the still life you get when an artist looks up from their tea and decides the shelf will do. That is exactly why we love it: nothing has been arranged for effect, and yet the whole thing hums with warmth.

The medium is gouache, laid on in soft chalky layers of apricot, lavender and dusty blue, with the lamp glowing white against the plaster. The handling is quick and unfussy, the kind of painting that comes out of an evening art class or a lifetime of sketching, and it has the honesty that a studio piece rarely manages. It is unsigned. The colours are the reason to buy it: they are the exact palette of a faded Farrow and Ball chart, and it will settle into a pink, terracotta or pale blue room as if it had always been there.

The painting is set in a wide cream card mount with a narrow gilt fillet at the aperture, and glazed within a slim moulded gilt frame. The gilding has been laid over red bole in the traditional way and has rubbed through at the edges and corners so the red glows 

beneath, which gives it far more life than a flat gold finish. The frame is backed and strung for hanging. The whole measures 43 cm by 38 cm including the frame. The mount has a little age toning and the frame a few light knocks to the edges, none of which detracts. This is a piece for a bedroom wall, a landing, or the top of a chest of drawers leaning beside a lamp of its own, which is a joke we cannot resist. It also works hung low beside a chair where you can actually look at it.

Small interior scenes like this are the pieces people write to us about afterwards. They are gentle company, painted by amateurs who cared, and they cost a fraction of what the same charm would fetch with a signature in the corner.
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A framed still life painting displayed on a white surface against a light gray wall. The artwork depicts a tabletop scene with a blue-and-white vase, a white globe lamp, and small bottles, enclosed in a white mat and a brown wooden frame.
An impressionistic oil painting of a still life interior scene, featuring a table with a blue and yellow patterned mirror, a white table lamp, a small brown bottle, and other household objects against a warm beige wall.
Close-up of the corner of a framed artwork, showing a distressed multi-layered wooden frame with gold leaf and reddish-brown tones, a cream mat, and a blue-gray abstract painting.
The back of a rustic wooden picture frame leaning against a white wall, with a cardboard backing secured by twine, styled with dried flowers on a white surface.
An impressionistic still life painting depicting a tabletop arrangement with a blue octagonal mirror, a white globe lamp, a brown bottle, and other neutral-toned objects against a warm beige wall.
A framed art print depicting a still life interior scene with a table, lamp, and blue-and-white vase, displayed on a white surface against a light wall.