Signed and dated 'Jack Smith 59' (lower right),
signed again, inscribed and dated again 'JACK SMITH/BOTTLES/LIGHT + SHADOW/IN A ROOM 59' (on the reverse) and inscribed again 'BOTTLES, LIGHT & SHADOW IN A ROOM' (on the canvas-overlap)


Works by Jack Smith from the 1950s are extremely rare. Those that survive are pictures that were acquired early on by museums and private collectors. Smith infamously destroyed the rest of his early work as he considered that his work had moved on.

Between 1959-1960, Smith became preoccupied with the pictorial expression of light. Norbert Lynton comments, 'There is no doubt that these pictures are made of paint, with a brush moving mostly horizontally both to record the action of light and to hold real light and shadow in the ridges and grooves' (see N. Lynton, Jack Smith A Painter in Pursuit of Marvels, London, 2000, p. 45).

The Tate Gallery has another work from this series. Their caption records the following:

"The catalogue of Smith's exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1959 explains that from 1957-9 Smith was 'preoccupied with the problems involved in giving form to the pictorial expression of light' The paintings of this period attempt to depict light through the form of the objects that displace it. Smith commented on the Tate's closely related still-life of the same year, 'Bottles in Light and Shadow' that this was one of a series of pictures, 'all attempting to state a particular experience of still-life objects in a room. Also a particular kind of light and darkness which constantly changes their identity.'"

In original artist frame.