Gwen John worked slowly and meticulously, producing fewer than 200 paintings during her lifetime. Like this quiet interior with a table, teapot, and cups, her works were invariably small in size, muted in palette, and restrained in mood. About her life and art, she wrote to a friend, “I may never have anything to express, except this desire for a more interior life.” This is one of a series of four paintings of the same subject; the other versions are in the collections of the National Museum of Wales, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery.