Chairs and Pots demonstrates Frances Hodgkins’ interest in exploring spatial ambiguity. The objects appear to merge together, with the composition verging into abstraction. Rippling lines at the base of the central chair leg suggest the objects are standing in flowing water. This sense of movement is contrasted with the flat background, on which shadows are visible. The sense of ambiguity is enhanced by the tonal harmony created by the blue palette, punctuated only with areas of yellow and red. Hodgkins had travelled in Spain from 1935-6, and this work relates stylistically to several other gouaches she painted during that period. It also shows characteristics of a phase which had emerged in her work around 1928-30, and later became an important aspect of her practice: the ‘still life-landscape’. In such works, Hodgkins combined elements of both artistic genres, often with a surreal edge.