This tiny still life reveals Peploe’s interest in Old Master painting, in particular the work of the seventeenth century artists Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn, whose work he saw in Holland in 1895. After the First World War, Peploe virtually abandoned portraiture and figure painting and specialised instead in still lifes and landscapes. Here, the thickly applied paint of the flowers contrasts to the smooth, dark background.