BE 328
BEN NICHOLSON
Denham 1894 – 1982 London
Newlyn
Signed, dated Aug 18 - 50 and inscribed with the title and the artist’s address on the reverse
Oil, gouache, watercolor and pencil on board mounted on board:
10 1/8 x 11 ¾ in / 25.7 x 29.8 cm
Framed size: 14 5/8 x 16 in /37.1 x 40.6 cm
With its original backboard
Painted on August 18th 1950
Provenance:
Grosvenor Gallery, London;
I.A.L and Barbara Diamond, Los Angeles, 1959
In this exceptional work, Nicholson depicts a view of Newlyn, a small coastal town in southwest Cornwall, from his house Chy-an-Kerris, Carbis Bay. Both Nicholson and Hepworth found boundless inspiration in the Cornish landscape and in 1949, the year before Nicholson painted Newlyn, became founding members of the Penwith Society of Arts in Cornwall. Newlyn centred around a dynamic harbour and relied then, as it does today, on the fishing industry.
In Newlyn, Nicholson depicts the harbour as viewed through the frame of an open window, an artistic device which he often employed in the twenties along with his first wife, Winifred Nicholson and Christopher Wood. During this period he frequently drew and painted from the vantage point of windows overlooking Cornish villages and the surrounding countryside. As well as framing the scene below, the open window, or more specifically the window ledge, allowed for the inclusion of a still life group in the foreground which appears to dissolve into the linear rooftops beyond. The pencil outline of a handle seems to suggest the presence of a transparent cup or goblet, as well as painted fragments which could signify overlapping objects. Nicholson referred to this type of image as his ‘still life-landscape’ development which allowed him to explore his interest in uniting objects in the foreground with those in the background in a semi-abstract, post-cubist style. The combination of drawn and painted elements, still life and landscape subject as well as geometric and more representational viewpoints, make this a fascinating image indicative of the strides Nicholson made in his Post-War development.
This exceptional work comes from the collection of I.A.L. and Barbara Diamond in Los Angeles. Diamond wrote stories and screenplays in Hollywood during a four decade career. After collaborating with Billy Wilder on the screenplay for Love in the Afternoon in 1957, he worked closely with Wilder for the rest of his career, writing screenplays for 12 movies between 1957 and 1981. Their screenplays were nominated three times for Academy Awards (including the screenplay for Some Like it Hot in 1959), and they won an Oscar for their original screenplay for The Apartment in 1960 which also won Best Picture. The Diamonds were buying art actively in the late 1950s through the 1960s focusing on European contemporary art. The current work undoubtedly held a prominent position in this important collection.
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.