A Vase of Flowers

Turnbull employed watercolour with a deliberate lack of polish. Colours bleed and overlap, edges blur, and forms are built from gestural strokes rather than controlled lines. The background’s chaotic stripes contrast with the more defined, though still rough, floral shapes. This approach prioritizes expressive energy over decorative harmony, aligning with early modernist tendencies in British watercolour.

Created in 1937, the work remains within private collections and has not been widely exhibited. It is not part of any major institutional permanent display, though its style resonates with contemporaneous British watercolourists who rejected academic conventions. Its survival suggests it was valued by the artist or close associates, though no public acquisition record exists.

In late 1930s Britain, watercolour was often associated with genteel landscape or botanical illustration. Turnbull’s work diverges from this norm, embracing informal composition and expressive brushwork seen in some avant-garde circles. Her approach reflects a quiet rebellion against rigid traditions, aligning with broader shifts toward personal expression in interwar British art.

Though not widely known, the painting exemplifies a strand of British watercolour that valued emotional honesty over technical perfection. Its unpolished aesthetic anticipates later 20th-century movements that privileged process and immediacy. It stands as a modest but distinct example of an artist choosing authenticity over convention in a period still dominated by formalism.