Charles Goeller painted Checked Tablecloth during the early years of his career when he was studying in Paris during the 1920s, and as seen in the present canvas, his mature style had fully developed. This large-scale work was exhibited at the Société du Salon d’Automne in 1928, and upon his return to New York, it was included in a show of promising artists organized by Alfred H. Barr at the Museum of Modern Art in 1930. Early critical reception for the Checked Tablecloth was universally favorable, noting it was “painted with enormous facility and clarity” and “his most accomplished.” The precise style and clean lines of this work place Goeller’s work firmly in the Precisionist canon and recall the domestic interiors of fellow Precisionist Charles Sheeler. The masterful handling of drapery, here featuring an intricate checkerboard pattern, would become one of Goeller’s signature elements.