Breakfast piece

'In Sydney, where one is so painfully conscious of the timidity of the younger painters who dare not put brush to canvas without the authority of this or that fashion, Herbert Badham has gone his own way, using his eyes for the world about him ... and finding that world eminently interesting, and full of subjects to be told about in paint.' - Henry Gibbons, 1939

Studying under Julian Ashton, George Lambert and Henry Gibbons at Ashton's Sydney Art School, Badham received a traditional art training based on the primacy of draughtsmanship, to which he added a personal interest in perspective and design. Exemplifying this particular interest, 'Breakfast piece' was an arrangement of objects amongst which the artist situated his wife.

Badham was one of a number of figurative painters in Sydney between the wars whose work typified an aspect of Sydney modernism that addressed contemporary subjects through predominantly English realist traditions. He is primarily recognised for his compositions depicting urban scenes which offer an opportunity to reconstruct aspects of life in Sydney as it was lived at the time.