Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums' is the most arresting in a series of women-in-garden paintings which E Phillips Fox created over 1911–12. It features his characteristic use of reflected and dappled light as decorative patterning, and highlights the influence of fashionable Japonisme and Japanese print design. The model for 'Nasturtiums' was the young Australian artist Edith Anderson, who stayed with the artist and his wife Ethel Carrick over 1912.

However, as the title of the painting implies, Fox’s focus is on resolving a highly decorative composition (and less on painting an individual or capturing a moment of observation). He uses the model’s mauve and black accoutrements just as a still-life painter would arrange the objects of his composition, for the greatest formal effect.