This oddly appealing painting arrived with us in a bit of a state but cleaning and re-framing has brought it out to best advantage. We are not quite sure why a sort of conversation piece of two beds should so draw the viewer into the scene....... and we are left wondering what and where and who might just have left the room.
Raymond James Coxon was a British artist, born in Staffordshire.  He served in Egypt and Palestine during WWI and went on to study at Leeds School of Art where he met his future wife, Edna Ginesi and he and Henry Moore became lifelong friends.  All three went on together to study at the Royal College of Art, where Eric Ravilious was another contemporary.  In 1927 Coxon founded The British Independent Society with Moore and Leon Underwood. He was commissioned as a war artist during WWII and went on to teach at Chelsea School of Art.  Coxon’s range was wide,  but he and his wife are probably best known as a painters of landscapes and nature. The Coxons travelled a great deal and we had thought this attic bedroom must be one they had seen on their travels, in Paris perhaps, but the more expert view is that it is a wartime painting from a hospital or convalescent home, possibly of a nurses' room.