Interior (1915): Art, History and Details

Interior (1915) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gwen John (British, 1876–1939).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Gwen John worked slowly and meticulously, producing fewer than 200 paintings during her lifetime. Like this quiet interior with a table, teapot, and cups, her works were invariably small in size, muted in palette, and restrained in mood. About her life and art, she wrote to a friend, “I may never have anything to express, except this desire for a more interior life.” This is one of a series of four paintings of the same subject; the other versions are in the collections of the National Museum of Wales, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery.

Object facts

• Title: Interior
• Date: 1915
• Creator attribution: Gwen John (British, 1876–1939)
• Culture: England, 20th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Unframed: 33 x 24.2 cm (13 x 9 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1982.6

A detail from the museum

The teapot depicted in this interior is a brown betty, a traditional, British-made teapot known for its red clay construction, distinctive round shape, and brown Rockingham glaze, which is believed to enhance tea flavor and heat retention.

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Henning, Edward B. “New Paintings by Four Artists from Britain.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 69, no. 10 (December 1982): 311–323.
• Lee, Sherman E. “Year in Review for 1982.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 1 (January 1983): 3–55.
• Sackerlotzky, Rotraud. “Gwen John: Interior: The Brown Teapot.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 4 (April 1988): 98–111.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.