Still Life with a Netsuke Figure, 1926 (oil on panel)

Lawrence Biddle's glossy, enamelled style, painted in oils on panel, is distinctive, and only varied minutely. His best pictures are delicately poised and lit, the colours carefully balanced. Biddle lived in West Hampstead with his friend the musician Howard Rankin Hulls at the house of the artist Edward Julius Detmold, Detmold's parents and his sister Nora. At the death of Detmold's father and the onset of war, all decamped to Bank House in Montgomery, Wales. The picture shows the strong Japanese influence upon the artists, the snowdrops, anenomies, forget-me-nots and primula in an enamelled Japanese vase of about 1900 and a netsuke, possibly of the hermit Gama Sennin with his pot and his toad. It is in a fine example of a Rowley Gallery frame, of carded gesso, silver gilt and lacquered.