Table with small flowerpot

This work forms part of a series of still lifes featuring similar little tables that Roger Raveel painted between 1948 and 1952. Through the use of bright blocks of colour and simplified forms, he sought a contemporary way of depicting reality. The influence of Henri Matisse, whose work Raveel studied closely as a young painter, is evident here. At the same time, he distances himself from the dark, dense Flemish Expressionism that dominated painting well into the post-Second World War period.