BF 175

 

BEN NICHOLSON

Denham 1894 – 1982 London

 

Untitled

 

Signed, dated 1940 and inscribed ‘FOR STEVO & KATHLEEN, 1941’ on the reverse

Gouache: 10 x 10 in / 25.4 x 25.4 cm

Framed size: 16 ½ x 16 ½ in / 41.9 x 41.9 cm

In its original frame, with original backboard

 

Provenance:

John Cecil Stephenson and his wife, a gift from the artist, then by descent

 

Literature:

Norbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, Phaidon, London, p.184, no. 168, illustrated

 

 

In August 1939, a few days before Britain declared war on Germany, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth left London with their four-year-old triplets for the safety of Cornwall.  At the invitation of Adrian Stokes and his wife Margaret Mellis, they stayed at Little Park Owles^[1] just outside of St Ives, overlooking Carbis Bay.  Having decided to settle in Cornwall, the family moved four months later into a house of their own called Dunluce, a quarter of a mile away.  The ‘wretched little villa’, as Nicholson christened it, was too confined for him to consider large scale works or indeed for Hepworth to continue sculpting.   During this period Nicholson made many small paintings, reliefs and drawings which required less space and time.  The change of location offered new possibilities as well as privations and saw Nicholson develop a broader range of production, fusing genres and thwarting the limitations of representation and abstraction.

 

In London, Nicholson and Hepworth had been at the forefront of the British avant-garde.  Key members of Unit One and later the Seven & Five Society, Nicholson also exhibited with Abstraction-Création and co-edited Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art.  One of the most influential friendships Nicholson developed at this time was with Piet Mondrian, a founding member of De Stijl.  Nicholson had visited Mondrian in his Paris studio in 1934 and was undoubtedly affected by the strong colour range and flat, rectangular forms he saw there.  As well as frequently exhibiting with Mondrian, Nicholson was also instrumental in the artist’s move to London in 1938^[2], even finding him a room in Belsize Park directly above his own studio.  

 

 

Though the present work appears to continue the artist’s concentration on abstracted, geometrical forms in the manner of the Constructive movement, Nicholson has combined this with the structure and colour associations of still life and landscape subjects inspired by his move to Cornwall.  In the early 1950s, Nicholson spoke of his white reliefs ‘as akin to a breakfast table: the circle is the cup, the rectangle a breadboard, another rectangle a newspaper, the base the table’ (cited in Norbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, Phaidon, London, 1993, p. 166). At the time Untitled was made, Nicholson was also painting naturalistic works of the Cornish landscape, often combing a still life motif as seen through a window. The same composition and framing device can be seen abstracted in the present work.  The dark black, blue and brown rectangles forming a deep L-shape on the left recall the bold repeated rectangle of a window ledge, the light blue, cream and white areas representing the sea sand and light of the Cornish coast, the pencil circle the still life cup. 

 

 

 

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 and 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.