BF 9
BEN NICHOLSON
Denham 1894 – 1982 London
June 11-49 (Cornish landscape)
Signed, dated and inscribed with the title on the reverse
Oil and pencil on canvas-board: 8 ½ x 11 ½ in / 21.5 x 29.2 cm
Framed size: 14 1/8 x 17 1/8 in / 35.9 x 43.5 cm
In its original frame
Provenance:
Lefevre Gallery, London
The Peter Meyer Collection, purchased at the Leicester Galleries exhibition in 1950 (below)
Exhibited:
London, Leicester Galleries, Artists of Fame and Promise, August - September 1950, no. 113, as ‘Still Life and Cornish Landscape’
The present work is one of a small group of compositions of the sweeping Penwith landscape depicting farms near Halsetown, above St Ives. The building in the present work is Chytodden Farm, near Towednack. Its structure is largely unchanged to this day. The hill on the right in the background is Rosewall. These small-scale pictures date from the 1940s and often show still-life elements in the foreground. In the present work, the still life of cups and vessels of the foreground interact with the far-reaching landscape stretching away towards the distant sea.
Jeremy Lewison comments, ‘In order to earn a living he [Nicholson] returned to painting landscapes in naive style which his gallery, Alex Reid and Lefevre, considered easier to sell. The return to landscape was generally to be observed in English painting during the war as Britain reverted to a period of isolation. The cramped conditions at their house, ‘Dunluce’ resulted in a considerable drop in output and in September 1942 the Nicholsons moved to a house called Chy-an-Kerris on the far side of Carbis Bay which gave the Nicholsons more, albeit not much more, space. Paintings of this period were small and rehearse and develop the ideas which he had worked out in the thirties...the bright palette is a development from the abstracted paintings of the late thirties. Other paintings develop the theme of the still life set before a window which Nicholson, along with many other members of the Seven and Five Society, including Winifred Nicholson, had enjoyed during the late twenties...In such compositions Nicholson was interested in being able to unite objects in the foreground with those in the background, allowing the eye to travel over large distances and periods of time at one glance...The impact of the landscape or Nicholson’s work was considerable. After his move to Cornwall [in 1939] he ceased to make white reliefs, which could be interpreted as an urban art, and reintroduced subdued colours as well as brighter tones which appear to be derived from his surroundings...The greatest impact on Nicholson’s work, however, came from the move to a large studio backing onto Porthmeor Beach, St Ives in 1949. In a letter of application for the studio, Nicholson wrote that he was working in a small converted bedroom and that ‘this imposes a very definite limit on the size of paintings I can make’ (letter to Philip James [Director of Art at C.E.M.A. (Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts) which subsequently became the Arts Council, between 1942 and 1958], dated 24th May 1949). (See J. Lewison, Ben Nicholson, London, 1991, pp. 19, 20).
Similar views are found in earlier paintings such as Still Life and Landscape (Towednack) 1943 and in 1946 (Towednack) where again Nicholson used the division of the distant fields to interact with his still life composition.
An inscription written by the painter Patrick Heron on the backboard of the present composition, ‘towednack’, confirms the location of the view that Nicholson captured. Peter Meyer recalled his meeting with Ben Nicholson, ‘I only met him once, at dinner at the Heron’s. I gave him a lift and took him home to see the picture of his. Patrick has since identified the site and has written the name on the back’ (private correspondence).
We are grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness for her assistance with the cataloguing of this work.
BEN NICHOLSON
Denham 1894 – 1982 London
Born in Denham, Buckinghamshire in 1894 Ben Nicholson is amongst the most celebrated and internationally recognised British painters of the 20th century. The son of the renowned artist Sir William Nicholson, he attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1910 – 11 and between 1911 and 1914 he travelled in France, Italy and Spain and briefly lived in Pasadena, California in 1917-18. From 1920 – 1931 he was married to the artist Winifred Nicholson and together they lived in Switzerland, London and Cumberland. His first one-man exhibition was held at the Adelphi Gallery in London in 1922 and shortly thereafter he began to work on abstract paintings which were influenced by Synthetic Cubism. In 1926 he met Christopher Wood and in 1928, during a visit to Cornwall, he met the naïve painter Alfred Wallis. Both were to become important influences on his work and he became a member of the Seven and Five Society.
By 1928 he had adopted a primitive style which was inspired by Henri Rousseau and early English folk art. From 1931 Nicholson lived in London where he first met Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, in 1933, with Hepworth, he visited Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in France and they were encouraged by Jean Helion and Auguste Herbin to join Abstraction-Création. In 1934 he met Piet Mondrian and married Barbara Hepworth. During this period his White Relief paintings were considered to be amongst the most important new styles in international abstract art and in general his reliefs are felt to be his greatest works.
In 1937, with Naum Gabo and Sir Leslie Martin, Nicholson edited CIRCLE, the monograph on constructivist art which laid down the guidelines and principles of the modern movement, and was to become a landmark influence on the thinking of architects art historians.
In 1939 the Nicholson family moved to Cornwall and Nicholson resumed painting landscapes and began to add colour to his abstract reliefs. In 1945-46 he turned from reliefs to linear, post-cubist paintings and in 1952 he was commissioned to paint a mural for the Time-Life Building in London. In 1954 retrospectives of his work were held at the Venice Biennale and at the Tate Gallery, London, a second Tate retrospective followed in 1969.
In 1958 he moved to Switzerland where he lived until 1971 and began to concentrate once more on painted reliefs. In 1964 he made a concrete wall relief for the Documenta III exhibition in Kassel, Germany and in 1968 was awarded the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth. Nicholson returned to England in 1971, living until 1974 in Cambridge and then in Hampstead, London, where he died in 1982.