PROVENANCE

Estate of Marjan van Paassen, New Plymouth Purchased directly from the artist, 1967

A celebration of the beauty to be found in ordinary things, this painting shows Michael Smither returning to a detail of an earlier work to make it the subject of a work on its own. Centring the lathe-turned wooden egg cup of the work's title in the composition and tilting it slightly to show the dark void of its perfectly spherical empty centre lends it a symbolic significance, pointing to the absence of the egg which once nestled within it. Eggs themselves represent new life and un-hatched potential and bring associations of hope and purity. In Renaissance paintings, they are often a symbol of fertility and the circle of life and featured as a part of pagan festivals celebrating spring. From a Christian perspective, Easter eggs are said to represent Jesus' emergence from the tomb and resurrection. In this painting, we are witnessing how a simple boiled egg, consumed at breakfast, can offer a narrative of new beginnings.

Smither's wife, poet Elizabeth Smither wrote at that time: The ascending Sun by clarity/Graces each morning thing,/Out of the darkness bestowing/Praises in pools of light. Here the light falls from above, causing the handle of the spoon to cast a shadow across the yellow square the saucer and egg cup are set upon. The empty blue bowl on the rectangular plinth behind echoes the geometric shapes of the objects in the foreground and complicates the composition giving it a sacramental quality.

This simple still life has been abstracted from Large Kitchen Composition, 1965, a painting in the collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery. There in the larger painting, the egg cup still has a broken egg in it, and seems to be part of Elizabeth's breakfast, abandoned like the open book beside it so that she can feed baked beans to wriggling infant Sarah, imprisoned in her blue highchair in the kitchen at the family's rented home, The Gables in New Plymouth. The blue bowl behind on its plinth sits in front of the window, bathed in morning light, a serene moment of beauty in a hectic scene.

Eggshells would stand Smither in good stead: in 1968, Smither's painting, The Colander, an image of an aluminium colander filled with broken eggshells, tipped up towards the viewer on a beige tabletop with a dark background, won the H.C. Richards Memorial Prize of $1000 in Brisbane, and immediately entered the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery.

LINDA TYLER