SP 4446
BEN NICHOLSON
Denham 1894 – 1982 London
June 56 (Morbihan)
Signed, dated and inscribed with the title on the reverse
Oil and pencil on carved board laid down on masonite:
35 3/8 x 21 5/8 in/ 89.7 x 55 cm
Framed size: 37 x 23 ¼ in / 94 x 59.1 cm
In its original frame, with original backboard
Provenance:
Gimpel Fils Gallery, London
Eric Estorick, London, 1957
Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Inc., New York
Otto Preminger, New York, then by descent to Mrs Otto Preminger
Exhibited:
London, Gimpel Fils, Ben Nicholson, June 1957, no. 1 (illustrated on the cover)
Nicholson continued to travel extensively throughout Europe during the 1950s which undoubtedly affected his works, many of which refer in their subtitles to particular places. In this work, the subtitle Morbihan is not only a geographical location but is also resonant with geological significance. Morbihan meaning ‘little sea’ in Breton, lies on the south coast of Brittany and is celebrated as one of the most impressive megalithic sites in the world with a great number of standing stones and burial chambers to rival Stonehenge.
As Nicholson returned to reliefs in the mid 1950s, he sought to reflect the affinity between landscape and architectural form which he found travelling in Europe, in particular the dramatic silhouette, tone and texture of the prehistoric stone structures which fascinated him. Besides the tall vertical format of Morbihan, the muted earth brown and grey hues, enlivened by areas of white, are rubbed and scraped into the surface, emphatically evoking the sensory experience of standing stones. In this way Morbihan closely resembles February 1956 (menhir) of the same year in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (see below). The word menhir is actually Breton for ‘long stone’, and therefore also refers to the prehistoric standing stones found predominantly in Brittany, a theme continued, like Morbihan, in the vertical format and rough hewn surface texture and palette.
As Peter Khoroche contends: ‘Texture was always of prime importance to Nicholson, whatever the medium he was working in. It was in the search for a greater contrast of surface texture than the scraping and incising of his prepared canvas could give that he had first begun to carve and cut away wooden board to varying depths, each depth potentially differing in colour or texture. And now again, in the spring of 1953, after an interval of over six years in which he had made almost no reliefs, he must have felt this same urge actually to excavate an object’ (Peter Khoroche, Ben Nicholson: drawings and painted reliefs, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2002, p. 71).
While agreeing with the universal importance of texture in Nicholson’s reliefs, Jeremy Lewison suggests the artist’s visit to Brittany had a notable influence on his relief work of the 1950s, ‘their surfaces have been scraped and sanded so that the paint appears inherent in the wood. This manner is distinctively different from the coloured reliefs of the 1930s where no attempt was made to disguise the fact that paint was applied to the support. A visit to Brittany in 1948, where he visited some of the Neolithic sites, had made a considerable impression. He observed standing stones weathered by age and scarred by the action of nature. The experience was not fully assimilated until the 1960s but in the reliefs of the 1950s it was beginning to manifest itself. Often pale and chalky, these works feel remarkably northern European when compared with the southern [reliefs]. Nicholson had an uncanny ability not only to suggest different geographies but also different climates’ (Ben Nicholson, exhibition catalogue, Hayama, Museum of Modern Art, 2004, p. 108).
February 1956 (menhir),
Oil on board: 99.4 x 30 cm
Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Despite the emotional upheavals of his personal life, (Nicholson and Hepworth divorced in 1951, he went on to meet and marry Dr Felicitas Vogler in 1957), the 1950s was an extremely successful decade for Nicholson professionally in the international art world. In 1954 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale and won the Ulisse award, as well as holding one-man shows in Brussels and at the Lefevre Gallery, London. In 1955 the Tate Gallery staged a retrospective of his work and Gimpel Fils held another solo exhibition. Nicholson was awarded the first prize in the International Guggenheim Painting Competition in 1956.
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.