Roger Fry, The Breakfast Table, c.1918. Image courtesy of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum

Painted around the time the Omega Workshops were closed and the ending of the Great War, Roger Fry still found time to paint.

This young couple at the breakfast table seem content to engage in their own activities, he reading the papers, she writing letters. An ocean of white tablecloth separates them. Despite the silence, their relationship seems to be blooming and happy, evident from the central, vibrant vase of flowers, a metaphor perhaps of their new marriage.

At this time, the world was coming to the end of the most grisly of wars and the Spanish Influenza pandemic was soon to take an estimated 100 million lives. Roger Fry’s snapshot of a contented couple belies what might have been a somber time for many of Earth’s inhabitants.