Still life painting is a genre that refuses to die. A humble genre concerned with the pictorial representation of inanimate objects often including jugs, still life painting can be an exercise in illusionism, or an opportunity to explore the sensual pleasures of the material world. For women, still life painting – a genre firmly rooted in the domestic realm – is a pictorial space that that reflects both the limitations and possibilities of their practice. In this talk, Te Papa Curator Historical Art Dr Rebecca Rice explores the still life paintings that inspired Paul Maseyk’s exhibition Jugs in New Zealand Painting, and the interplays between the painted jugs and those he created in response.