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At the time of publication the artworks in this brochure are for sale
Contact: Jonathan Green Telephone: +44 (0)7768 818 182 Email: jonathangreen@richardgreen.com Matthew Green Telephone: +44 (0)7770 957 326 Email: matthewgreen@richardgreen.com
BEN NICHOLSON om Denham 1894 – 1982 London
Ben Nicholson was born in Denham, Buckinghamshire in 1894, the eldest of four children of artists Sir William Nicholson and his first wife Mabel Pryde. He spent his early education at Heddon Court, Hampstead and Gresham’s School, Holt before studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1910–11, where he met and befriended Paul Nash. Following graduation, Nicholson spent time in France and Italy before living in Pasadena, California for health reasons between 1917–18. He was declared unfit for active service during the First World War due to his asthma. In 1920 Nicholson married the artist Winifred Roberts and they subsequently divided their time between London, Cumberland and Switzerland, often visiting Paris on the way. Having experienced Cubism first hand, he produced his first abstract paintings in 1924. That same year he held his first solo exhibition at the Twenty-One Gallery, London and was invited to become a member of the Seven and Five Society. Accompanied by the artist Christopher Wood, Nicholson visited St Ives, Cornwall for the first time in August 1928, where they discovered the painter Alfred Wallis who would become an important influence on them both. In 1931 he met the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, and within a year began sharing a studio with her in Hampstead. Together they held a joint exhibition at Tooth’s Gallery, London in 1932. Nicholson would go on to marry Hepworth after his divorce from Winifred Nicholson was finalised in 1938. From 1933 Nicholson became a member of Unit One and was invited, together with Hepworth, to join the group Abstraction-Création. He began making abstract reliefs in 1933 and a series of white painted reliefs the following year which would establish his international reputation. Winifred’s move to Paris in 1932 with their children meant that Nicholson visited often, enabling him to establish links with other artists there, including Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso and Jean Arp. In 1934 he met Piet Mondrian and played an active role in his move to Hampstead in 1938. Nicholson co-edited the publication Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art with the sculptor Naum Gabo and the architect Sir Leslie Martin in 1937. In 1939 Nicholson and Hepworth relocated with the triplets (born in 1934) to Cornwall where he resumed painting landscapes and coloured abstract reliefs. His international reputation grew during the 1950s as a result of a series of large still lifes for which he received several important prizes. In 1954 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale (alongside Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon) and was awarded the Ullisse prize. The following year the Tate Gallery held the first of two retrospectives of his work, the second being shown in 1969. In 1958 he moved to Switzerland with his third wife Felicitas Vogler (Hepworth and Nicholson having divorced in 1951) where he began to concentrate once more on abstract reliefs including a large wall relief made in 1964 for the Documenta III exhibition in Kassel, Germany. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1968. Nicholson returned to England in 1971, living until 1974 in Cambridge and then in Hampstead where he remained until his death in 1982.
CONTENTS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8 . 9.
Flowers, 1928 1936 (gouache) 1932-37 (still life - Punch and Judy show) 1947, Feb 21 St Ives Harbour (Summer) Aug 31 – 51 September 1955 (Alcino) June 1960 (stone goblet) Aug 63 (metallic) 1967 - 8 (relief)
1 Flowers Signed and inscribed on the overlap Flowers Ben Nicholson 1928 Oil on canvas: 18 x 16 in / 45.7 x 40.6 cm In the artist’s carved wood frame: 24 ⅛ x 22 in / 61.3 x 55.9 cm P r ov enance :
The Lefevre Gallery, London Robert & Katherine Beatrice Mayor, early 1930s, then by descent E x hibite d :
Possibly London, The Lefevre Galleries, Paintings by Ben & Winifred Nicholson and Pottery by William Staite Murray, July 1928 London, The Lefevre Galleries, Flower Paintings by Contemporary British Artists, February 1933, no. 34 Price: £350,000 + ARR
The 1920s was a decade of continuous exploration and development for Ben Nicholson, during which he observed and adapted the styles of other avantgarde European artists. From their first holiday together, Ben and Winifred Roberts (whom he met and married in 1920) painted side by side, sharing ideas and recording the same subjects with their own spirit and developing style, travelling between England and Switzerland via Paris. In the spring of 1928, Christopher Wood came to stay at the Nicholsons’ home, Banks Head in Cumberland, where the three artists painted together, the cross-fertilisation of ideas and synchronization of techniques reflected in the similarity of their work.1 Winfred later recalled: ‘inspiration ran high and flew backwards and forwards from one to the other’.2 ‘Ben and Kit had made friends with a friendship and fellowship in their work which brought the very best of them to flowering point – It was great fun to see – the zest and vitality and life in it meant everything to us all…’.3 In July that same year, Ben and Winifred exhibited paintings together at the Lefevre Gallery, London, alongside pottery by William Staite Murray. Although the subject is more often associated with the work of Winifred and Kit Wood, Ben exhibited five paintings entitled Flowers. Winifred also exhibited flowerpieces, but their titles are more specific, describing the species of flower represented such as Meadow Cranesbill and Broom, Cuckoo flower, Polyanthus, Harebells and Knapweed. Writing of their life at Banks Head, their son Jake recalled that Winifred often gathered bunches of wild flowers and brought them home to paint; ‘Wild flowers and garden flowers, too, were subjects she shared with Christopher Wood…Although Ben painted flowers at this period, in his pictures the jug is always more important than the flowers’.4 Though the vessel in the present work is unusually plain, the compositional arrangement recalls some of the artist’s earliest still life paintings such as The striped jug, 1914 (The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds)
and The red necklace, 1916–19 (private collection), in which a jug is placed to the lower left of an upright canvas with a piece of fabric hanging behind it. These dark, naturalistic still lifes (which Ben later referred to as being ‘slick’ and “Vermeer”),5 reflect the inspiration of his father, William Nicholson, which the artist acknowledged in 1963: ‘But of course I owe a lot to my father – especially to his poetic idea and to his still-life theme...not only from what he did as a painter but from the very beautiful striped and spotted jugs and mugs and goblets, and octagonal and hexagonal glass objects which he collected. Having those things throughout the house was an unforgettable early experience for me’.6 Ben would return to the still life subject throughout his career, with ‘striped and spotted jugs and mugs and goblets’ a recurring theme. Having made a conscious move away from the sophisticated, Edwardian arrangements of his father at the beginning of the decade, in a large part thanks to Winifred, the present work can be seen to explore the art of painting itself by transposing the dark brown and umber patterns usually found on still life objects (or playing cards) to the surrounding canvas. It is possible that the spotted and striped design roughly defined behind the vase of deep red Tulips interspersed with dark green leaves and budding twigs, is a representation of the curtains at Banks Head; the luminosity of the canvas reflecting the light from the window.7 A pencil drawing by Ben entitled Breakfast table, Banks Head – Villa Capriccio, c. 1928-9 (British Museum, London) seems to show a striped and spotted curtain at the window of their house in Cumbria, as well as a striped cloth on the table covered with various pots and flowers. It is likely that Ben designed and printed these home furnishings, as Jake Nicholson explains: ‘Early in the 1920s Ben cut lino blocks and used these for making curtains and bedspreads in his various homes. He printed the cotton or linen himself. He used to print one of the blocks upside down to show that the fabric was handprinted. He made these designs for himself rather than for clients - designs such as Spots, Numbers, Blocks and Princess…Ben never thought of himself as a designer, but rather a painter whose ideas had a universal application’. 8 1 Letters from Kit Wood to Ben and Winifred show that the friends exchanged flowers and pottery as well as ideas. See Dear Winifred, Christopher Wood Letters to Winifred and Ben Nicholson 1926–1930, Anne Goodchild (ed.), Samson & Co., 2013. 2 Winifred Nicholson cited in Andrew Nicholson (ed.), ‘Blue was his Colour’, Unknown Colour: Paintings, Letters, Writings by Winifred Nicholson, Faber and Faber, London, 1987, p. 86. 3 Winifred Nicholson, letter to Frosca Munster, c. 1930, cited in Richard Ingleby, Christopher Wood, Alison & Busby, London, 1995, p. 184. 4 Jake Nicholson, ‘What Does An Artist Look For In A Painting Place’, A Painter’s Place, Banks Head Cumberland 1924–31, Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Ivon Hitchens, Christopher Wood & Paul Nash, exh. cat., Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, 1992, p. 11. 5 The artist in a letter to John Summerson, 3rd January 1944, cited in Jeremy Lewison, Ben Nicholson: the Years of Experiment 1919–39, exh. cat., Kettle’s Yard Gallery, Cambridge, 1983, p. 11. 6 ‘Ben Nicholson in conversation with Vera and John Russell’, The Sunday Times, 28th April 1963 cited in J. Lewison, ibid., p. 10. 7 ‘Each window of the house was like a picture frame holding the view beyond. The proportions and fenestration of the windows were carefully designed by Ben. The old stone walls made deep sills, on which jugs of flowers could stand and relate to the landscape’. Jake Nicholson, op. cit., p. 10. 8 Jake Nicholson, ‘Ben Nicholson’s Fabrics’, The Nicholsons: A Story of Four People and their Designs, exh. cat., York City Art Gallery, 1988, pp. 35–38.
2 1936 (gouache) Signed, dated and inscribed Ben Nicholson / 1936 / painting (in gouache) version 5/12 / Nicholson / Dunluce / Trelyon / St Ives / Cornwall on the reverse Gouache: 14 3/4 x 19 ⅝ in / 37.5 x 49.8 cm Frame size: 22 ⅛ x 26 ⅞ in / 56.2 x 68.3 cm P r ov enance :
Sotheby’s, London, 26th June 1985, lot 439 Ivor Braka Esq, England Bukowski Auctioneers, Sweden, 1988, no.10 Richard Green, London, April 2003 Private collection, Europe, June 2003 L ite r at u r e :
See Norbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, Phaidon, London, 1993, pp. 160–4 (Victoria & Albert Museum version illustrated pl. 146) Price: £345,000 + ARR
Nicholson created twelve versions of this iconic 1936 painting, at least two of which are held in public collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London [P.2-1961] and the A. E. Gallatin Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art [1945-91-4]. While retaining the geometric precision and considered arrangement of the oil paintings, the radiant colours of this gouache (inscribed version no. 5) are far more powerful, in particular the vibrant central primaries red and blue, but also the luminous light grey and a clearer distinction between soft black and brown. The juxtaposition of interlocking light and dark, opaque and transparent coloured planes of various sizes creates the illusion of different depths in space. Utilizing the same flat, rectilinear forms in tightly orchestrated arrangements, Nicholson’s abstract paintings of the 1930s saw an avid exploration of colour in direct contrast to his white reliefs of the same period. The introduction of vivid primary colours to an otherwise muted if not monochromatic palette can be attributed to a number of artistic influences, including Nicholson’s interaction with the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), whose studio in the rue du Départ, Paris, he first visited in 1934. In their coloured abstract work, both artists frequently introduced a small area of intense colour (in the present work red) into a rigorous system of straight-edged, interlocking planes. While Nicholson centralised the arrangement of his composition around the key note, it was Mondrian’s practice to relegate it to the margins. The links between abstraction, the power of colour relationships and the illusions of pictorial space had already been established for Nicholson in the early 1920s by the post-collage, Cubist works of Picasso and Braque. Nicholson created his first abstract paintings in 1924, 1924 (first abstract painting, Chelsea) (Tate Gallery) and 1924 (painting – trout) (private collection),
having the same year experienced a ‘completely abstract’ work by Picasso with, at its centre, ‘an absolutely miraculous green – very deep, very potent and absolutely real’.1 By 1936, Nicholson had met and fallen in love with Barbara Hepworth. In 1932 he parted with the artist Winifred Nicholson, moving from Chelsea to Parkhill Road, Hampstead, where he worked alongside Hepworth in her studio. Winifred’s move to Paris with their children meant that Nicholson visited the city often, picking up on the latest developments of the European avant-garde and meeting its key proponents. As a member of Abstraction-Création and co-editor of Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art with sculptor Naum Gabo and architect Leslie Martin, Nicholson became ‘a kind of Paris-London liaison’, establishing and maintaining links which revitalized English Modernism in the 1930s.2 By the end of that decade Nicholson’s reputation as the country’s leading exponent of geometric abstraction was assured and his international reputation was taking off.
1 The artist in a letter to John Summerson, 1944 cited in Picasso & Modern British Art, exh cat, Tate Publishing, London, 2012, pp. 95–96. 2 Cited in Sarah Jane Checkland, Ben Nicholson: The Vicious Circles of his Life and Art, London, 2000, p. 119.
3 1932-37 (still life - Punch and Judy show) Signed and dated Ben Nicholson / 1932-37 on the overlap and on the reverse. Inscribed with extensive colour notes on the stretcher. Signed, dated and inscribed with the title Ben Nicholson/1932-37/title for exh: “painting 193237”/(Punch and Judy Show) on the backboard. Signed and inscribed with the artist’s address NICHOLSON/Chy an Kerris/Headland Rd/Carbis Bay/St Ives/ Cornwall on the backboard Oil on canvas: 27 ¾ x 31 in / 70.5 x 78.7 cm Frame size: 29 ¾ x 33 in / 75.6 x 83.8 cm P r ov enance :
The Lefevre Gallery, London [X 7218] Durlacher Gallery, New York Private collection, Brussels, Belgium by 1955 The Redfern Gallery, London Viktor & Marianne Langen, Meerbusch, then by descent E x hibite d :
London, The Lefevre Gallery, Ben Nicholson Drawings 1921-47, Paintings and Reliefs 1921-38, 1946-47, May 1947, no. 64, as Still life 1932-37 New York, Durlacher Gallery, Ben Nicholson, 29th March – 23rd April 1949, no. 1, as Still life (Punch and Judy Show) 1932-27 Cincinnatti, Art Museum, Six English Moderns: Piper, Sutherland, Hepworth, Tunnard, Moore, Nicholson, February 1950, no. 1; this exhibition travelled to San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honour, May – June 1950, as Still Life Punch and Judy Show Japan, The British Council, 2nd International Art Exhibition, 1953, no. 13 Brussels, La Galerie Apollo, Ben Nicholson, 11th May – 6th June 1954, no. 17, illustrated on the cover, as Punch and Judy Show London, The Redfern Gallery, Metavisual, Tachiste, Abstract: Painting in England To-day, 4th April – 4th May 1957, no. 251, as Punch and Judy (illustrated)
1932 - 37 is an extraordinary painting of exceptional clarity and control, belonging to a group of important canvases of the same completion date in the public collections of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, the Courtauld Gallery and Tate, London. Each of these coloured abstract paintings feature planes of intense colour offset by larger areas of more muted, often grey hues. For architect and co-editor of Circle: An International Survey of Constructivist Art (published in 1937), Nicholson’s use of high keyed colour in his geometric paintings of the late 1930s, ‘had a great deal to teach architects concerning space construction’.1 Painted over a period of five years, this exceptional canvas saw Nicholson’s style develop from the free-flowing organic lines of biomorphic, Surrealist works to the mathematical precision and purity of his white reliefs. Nicholson’s progression towards non-representational art charted the ascent of his international reputation, as a member of AbstractionCréation and Unit One from 1933 and a participant in the seminal Abstract & Concrete touring exhibition of 1936. To a great extent it was Nicholson’s illustrious contacts that made London the centre of European Modern art in the late 1930s. While obviously a complex abstract arrangement of geometric forms and overlapping planes of colour, the composition and several elements in the present work clearly demonstrate figurative references; representing a tilted table upon which sits various still life objects, including the curved silhouette of a bowl. This magnificent painting was previously owned by Viktor & Marianne Langen, German philanthropists who assembled an impressive collection of modern and contemporary art from late 1940s, the majority of which is now in the Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany.
L ite r at u r e :
Herbert Read, Ben Nicholson paintings, reliefs, drawings, vol.1, London, 1955, p. 8, no. 94, illustrated as still life (Punch and Judy show) Apollo, October 1957, illustrated Viktor and Marianne Langen, Sammlung Viktor u. Marianne Langen. Kunst de 20ten Jahrhunderts, vol. 1, Ascona, 1986, p. 162, illustrated Price: £1,250,000 + ARR
1 Jeremy Lewison, Ben Nicholson, Tate Gallery, London, 1993, p. 52 referring to Leslie Martin, ‘Architecture and the Painter with Special Reference to the work of Ben Nicholson’, Focus, no. 3, Spring 1939.
4 1947, Feb 21 Signed and dated Ben Nicholson /1947/ Feb 21 on the reverse. Signed again and inscribed with the artist’s address Nicholson/ Chy an Kerris / Carbis Bay / Cornwall on the reverse Oil and pencil on board: 11 ¼ x 12 ¼ in / 28.6 x 31.1 cm Frame size: 12 ¾ x 13 ⅞ in / 32.4 x 35.2 cm P r ov enance :
The Lefevre Gallery, London Saidenberg Gallery, New York Waddington Galleries, London [WGB 3354] Dr Vera Dalley Lederman, acquired from the above E x hibite d :
London, Lefervre Gallery, Ben Nicholson: Drawings 1921-47, Paintings and Reliefs 1921-38, 1946-47, May 1947, cat. no. 97 Price: £290,000 + ARR
Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and their triplets moved to Carbis Bay in 1939, initially staying with the writer Adrian Stokes and his wife, the artist Margaret Mellis, at Little Park Owles and then from September 1942 at Chy-an-Kerris, where the present work was painted. At the end of the Second World War the artists decided to remain in Cornwall with frequent visits to London to participate in solo and group exhibitions. The move from Dunluce to Chy an Kerris allowed the artists slightly more room to work, though as Ben wrote to the Arts Council Director, Philip James, working in a small bedroom ‘imposes a very definite limit on the size of paintings I can make’.1 The small scale of 1947, Feb 21 and the centrality of pencil lines are persistent characteristics of Nicholson’s wartime work, the linearity, Jeremy Lewison suggests, relating to the stringed sculptures of Hepworth and Naum Gabo, as well as the pre-war mobiles of Alexander Calder.2 The geometric shapes, the balance of line and circle recall Nicholson’s abstract paintings and reliefs of the 1930s, adapting the strict perpendicular arrangement of rectangular motifs to allow for the shifting of planes and the overlapping of forms which animate the structured design, further enlivened with accents of bright, opaque colour. Within the red and blue facets of pure colour towards the edges of the board, Nicholson changes the tone or lightens the pigment in fragments seemingly overlapped by other drawn elements. Norbert Lynton refers to this as the artist’s use of ‘interference colours’ inspired by the Hungarian artist, László MoholyNagy (1895–1946), whom Nicholson and Hepworth had known in London in the late 1930s and whose illustrated article on light and colour had been reproduced in Circle. For Lynton, ‘The effect of such colours is to imply that opaque colour too is light rather than matter, a film rather than a slab. In BN’s hands this play of light and lightness in a context suggesting the physicality of relief, together with the tilting of most of the lines, this duality of solidity and
transparency, gives his image an unusual mobile, harlequin character’. 3 In the present work, Nicholson counters these ‘harlequin’ colours with large areas of more subdued grey tones, scrubbed and scored in places to highlight the texture of the board. The network of straight lines punctuated by drawn circles and carefully defined areas of contrasting colour in 1947, Feb 21, seems to prefigure Nicholson’s large scale murals of the early 1950s for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and the Time-Life building the following year.
1 Ben Nicholson letter to Philip James, 24th May 1949, cited in Norbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, Phaidon, London, 1993, p. 233. 2 See J. Lewison, Ben Nicholson, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1993, p. 224. 3 N. Lynton, op. cit. p. 199.
5 St Ives Harbour (Summer) Aug 31 – 51 Signed, dated and inscribed St Ives harbour (summer) aug 31 – 51/ Ben Nicholson on the reverse. Signed again and inscribed with the artist’s address Nicholson/Chy an Kerris/Carbis Bay/Cornwall Oil and pencil on board: 14 ½ x 18 ⅛ in / 36.8 x 46 cm Frame size: 21 x 23 ½ in / 53.3 x 59.7 cm P r ov enance :
Durlacher Gallery, New York H. Marc Moyens, Washington DC Sotheby’s London, 3rd April 1990, lot 56 Fujii Gallery, Tokyo, acquired from the above Sotheby’s New York, 3rd November 1993, lot 56 Branco Weiss, acquired from the above, then by descent E x hibite d :
London, The Lefevre Gallery, Ben Nicholson, May 1952, no. 10 New York, Durlacher Gallery, Ben Nicholson, Exhibition of paintings & reliefs, 18th November – 13th December 1952, no. 3 Washington DC, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The H. Marc Moyens Collection, A Selection of Paintings Drawings and Sculpture, 12th December 1969 – 18th January 1970, no. 50 Price: £930,000 + ARR
Nicholson’s radiant, oblique depiction of St Ives harbour painted in the summer of 1951 is viewed through the frame of an open window, an artistic device he often employed during the late 1920s along with other members of the Seven and Five Society. During this period he frequently drew and painted from the vantage point of windows overlooking Cornish villages and the surrounding countryside, often combining the two media. 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 suggests the presence of a transparent mug, as well as painted fragments which could signify the overlapping of a goblet and carafe. Above this intricate grouping the undulating curves of the harbour appear, echoing the overlapping rhythms of the objects below and creating a tension between exterior and interior. Nicholson referred to this type of image as his ‘still lifelandscape’ development which enabled him to unite objects in the foreground with those in the background in a semiabstract, post-cubist style. The intricate balance of drawn and painted elements, still life and landscape subject, as well as abstract and more representational viewpoints, make this a fascinating image indicative of the strides Nicholson made in his Post-War development. Both Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth found boundless inspiration in the Cornish landscape, which had an immediate and ongoing effect on Nicholson’s
palette: ‘The impact of the landscape on Nicholson’s work was considerable. After his move to Cornwall 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’.1 The dazzling blue swathes of paint representing water and sky alongside areas of lush green, blush and terracotta in the present work are unmistakably inspired by the brilliant Cornish light and landscape at the height of summer. The vantage point across St Ives harbour would appear to suggest a view from near to Trezion, a house and studio which Nicholson moved to from Chy an Kerris in 1955 (following his divorce from Hepworth in February 1951) and later re-named Goonhilly. Nicholson described the view in a letter to Herbert Read on 24th February 1955: ‘It’s an absurd place…v. romantic…& with a whole series of different levels from which one sees between rooftops the Atlantic, the Island, St Ives Bay, Godrevy and finally from the top-most “lookout” level slap down into the harbour itself – in the foreground a chapel roof rounded at the nearest end to my terrace’.2 1951, the year this work was painted, also marked the Festival of Britain, for which Nicholson was commissioned to paint a mural for the South Bank restaurant. 1 Jeremy Lewison, Ben Nicholson, Rizzoli, New York, 1991, pp. 19–20. 2 The artist cited in J. Lewison, Ben Nicholson, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1993, p. 228.
6 September 1955 (Alcino) Signed, dated and inscribed Ben Nicholson (Alcino) Sept 1955 on the reverse Oil and pencil on pavatex: 48 x 60 in / 121.9 x 152.4 cm Frame size: 51 ¼ x 63 ¼ in / 130.2 x 160.7 cm P r ov enance :
The artist André Emmerich Gallery, New York, 1964 [10449] Private Collection, Milwaukee, 1965, acquired from the above Miriam Gantz Field, then by descent Richard Green, London, 2007 Private collection, Europe, 2007 E x hibite d :
Zurich, Galerie Charles Lienhard, Ben Nicholson, 3rd January – 7th February 1959, no. 25 Hannover, Kestner Gesellschaft, Ben Nicholson, 26th February – 5th April 1959, no. 45, illustrated Mannheim, Städtische Kunsthalle, Ben Nicholson, 18th April – 18th May 1959, no. 45 Essen, Folkwang Museum, Ben Nicholson, 23rd July – 30th August 1959 Moscow, Pushkin Museum, then to Leningrad, The Hermitage Museum, organised by the British Council, Exhibition of British Painting 1720–1960, 1960, no. 110, illustrated London, Gimpel Fils, Collectors’ choice X, March 1961, no. 24 Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Ben Nicholson Retrospective, 1964, no. 47 New York, André Emmerich Gallery/Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Ben Nicholson: reliefs, oil washes and paintings 1955–65, April 1965, no. 2, illustrated in colour Michigan, University of Michigan, Flint Institute of Arts, The first Flint Invitational: an exhibition of contemporary painting and sculpture, 4th November – 31st December, 1966
Nicholson was offered a larger studio in 1949, No. 3 Porthmeor Studios, St Ives, which gave him the opportunity to work on a grander scale and a major series of still life paintings followed. The subtitle and warm palette of rich browns, lush green and pale yellow in this work call to mind a sun-drenched Italianate landscape, whose undulating hills are suggested through the transparent silhouette of a bottle or carafe. Nicholson visited Tuscany in October 1956 and travelled the year before to Rome, Sienna, Pienza, Chiusure, Assisi, St Quirico d’Orcia, Spello and Spoleto.1 The synthesis of still life and landscape subjects had been explored by Nicholson in various media, often based upon an intimate arrangement of objects before a window, framing the picture within a picture. The boundaries have been removed in these imposing works, the expansive landscape setting fusing with the large, white planes of the tilted table, over which is drawn the fluid, entwined outlines of a collection of vessels. Though pencil lines are also used to demarcate the segmented composition, the differentiation of surface treatment from sharply defined areas of colour to sections scrubbed and scraped back to the board, maintain a sense of receding and advancing planes, lending it the appearance of a shallow relief or marquetry. The horizontal spread of the linear still life objects is unified by a more diffuse tonal colouring, like evening light across the landscape/table. Nicholson’s monumental still lifes of this decade brought him immediate international acclaim. August 1956 (Val d’Orcia) (Tate Gallery), won the First Guggenheim International Painting prize that year. He was also awarded first prize at the 39th Pittsburg International Exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in 1952, the Ulisse Prize at the Venice Biennale of 1954 and the International Prize for Painting at the 1957 São Paulo Biennial. The present work was selected by the British Council of Fine Arts for an exhibition of British Paintings held in Moscow and Leningrad in 1960, before touring America with exhibitions in Dallas, New York and Michigan later that decade.
L ite r at u r e :
John Russell, Ben Nicholson: drawings, paintings and reliefs 1911–1968, Thames and Hudson, London, 1969, fig. 118, illustrated in colour Price: £1,800,000 + ARR
1 See J. Lewison, Ben Nicholson, Tate Gallery Publishing, London, 1993, p. 247
7 June 1960 (stone goblet) Signed, dated and inscribed Ben Nicholson / June 1960 / (stone goblet) Oil and pencil relief on chipboard: 16 ⅛ x 7 ½ in / 41 x 19.1 cm Frame size: 21 ¾ x 13 in / 55.2 x 33 cm P r ov enance :
Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan Ernest Nebel, Erlenbach, Switzerland E x hibite d :
Zurich, Galerie Charles Lienhard, November – December 1960 Milan, Galleria Lorenzelli, Ben Nicholson, November 1960, no. 15 Bern, Kunsthalle, Ben Nicholson, 27th May -2nd July 1961, no. 114 London, Richard Green, Realism to Abstract II, November 2004, p. 88, no. 33, illustrated in colour p. 89 L ite r at u r e :
Ben Nicholson, exhibition catalogue, Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan, 1960, no. 15, illustrated Price: £85,000 + ARR
Nicholson left St Ives for Ticino, Switzerland with his new wife, the German photographer, Felicitas Vogler in March 1958, having married in London the previous year. Following the complex still life arrangements of the 1950s, Nicholson returned to more simplified compositions with fewer forms in the 1960s. He also returned with enthusiasm to the creation of abstract carved reliefs on both a small and monumental scale. In this striking vertical relief, Nicholson elongates and undermines the shape and texture of the chipboard with pencil lines and areas of oil paint that contradict its two-dimensional surface. Running almost the full height of the relief, the voluptuous silhouette of a goblet is negatively articulated by an area blocked-out in white paint. The surface contained by the outline of the vessel has been roughly shaded or rubbed with off-white paint, approximating the colour and texture of stone. This wrought and weathered surface was characteristic of the artist’s late reliefs, the visual and titular reference to stone perhaps representative of Nicholson’s continued fascination with Neolithic sites. Three lines of a roughly drawn square cross over the curvilinear outline, the vertical line parallel to a narrowing margin on the left. The rectangular area marked by this margin is painted a slightly darker brown than the chipboard. In this way Nicholson uses colour, line and texture to create the illusion of multiple layers of overlapping planes upon the two-dimensional surface.
8 Aug 63 (metallic) Signed, dated and inscribed Ben Nicholson/aug 63/(metallic) on the reverse. Further inscribed prego/spedire à/Dr A W Bechtler /Zollikon/Seestrasse 16/ (Zürigo) on the reverse Oil and pencil on carved board relief: 17 ⅜ x 19 ½ in / 44.1 x 49.5 cm Frame size: 18 ⅞ x 21 ¼ x 48 x 54 cm P r ov enance :
Dr A.W. Bechtler, Zurich, directly from the artist, then by descent Price: £450,000 + ARR
Aug 63 (metallic) is a delicately balanced, finely wrought masterwork of tonal harmony and spatial ambiguity, demonstrating the depth and refinement Nicholson achieved in his painted reliefs of the 1960s. At first glance it appears that the artist has constructed the composition by layering luminous sheets of burnished metal, evoked in the subtitle, at irregular angles to create an animated asymmetric design within the confines of a rectangle. Looking more closely at the edges of the compact, central form reveals that each quadrilateral has been carved out of a single piece of board to various, if shallow, depths. The gently slanting, bright, overlapping edges accentuate the tightly interlocking elements and suggest a subtle sense of movement, reinforced by the placement of a drawn circle close to the left side of the shifting rhomboid. The pale, naturalistic tones of earth and stone are characteristic of Nicholson’s reliefs at this time, their complex surfaces, painted, scrubbed and scored to produce a weathered effect redolent of the passage of time and erosion. The artist’s use of wood and board and his rigorous working of the surface texture, as if the colour were naturally occurring rather than painstakingly applied, underline Nicholson’s belief in the interconnectedness of colour and form: ‘In a painting it should be as impossible to separate form from colour or colour from form as it is to separate wood from wood-colour or stone-colour from stone. Colour exists not as applied paint but as the inner core of an idea and this idea cannot be touched physically any more than one can touch the blue of a summer sky.’1 The jagged planes of the surrounding mountains visible from Nicholson’s house above Lake Maggiore, Switzerland, certainly influenced the arrangement, forms and colouration of his reliefs at this time. Nicholson and Vogler moved to Casa alla Rocca, Gadero above Brissago on Lake Maggiore in April 1961, a house Nicholson commissioned and helped to design with the young architect Ello Katzenstein. The artist described the impact of this landscape to Herbert Read, emphasising colours key to his favourite season, winter, in Ticino: ‘This landscape is a knock out now, a marvellous whitish brown & plenty of snow on the mountains opposite which have a hard, clear, rounded form & a superb snow white on their tops against a blue such as I’ve never seen before & this morning a wisp of transparent golden crescent moon got up over the mountain immediately opposite.’2
1 The artist cited in Jeremy Lewison, Ben Nicholson, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1993, p. 233. 2 The artist, letter dated 28th December 1959, cited in J. Lewison, Ben Nicholson, ibid., p. 90.
9 1967 - 8 (relief) Signed and dated Ben Nicholson /1967-8 on the reverse Oil on carved board: 21 ¼ x 25 ½ in / 54 x 64.8 cm Frame size: 22 ½ x 26 ½ in / 57.2 x 67.3 cm P r ov enance :
Waddington Galleries, London Mr & Mrs George Bloch Waddington Galleries, London Private collection, Europe, acquired from the above June 2005 E x hibite d :
Hong Kong, Museum of Modern Art, Modern Art from the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, 1987, no. 36 London, Waddington Galleries, Ben Nicholson Reliefs, 1999, no. 5 Price: £350,000 + ARR
Nicholson made his first relief in Paris in 1933 and later recounted to Herbert Read that he had stumbled upon the idea when a small piece of gesso fell out of a prepared board he was working on and inspired him to carve it further: ‘mine came about by accident & bec. of Barbara’s sculptor’s tools lying around.’1 Nicholson was already involved in scraping and incising his work in the late 1920s, in addition to carving lino blocks, and was aware of Adrian Stokes’ promotion of relief carving in books such as Stones of Rimini, 1934 (for which Nicholson designed the cover). His development towards direct carving can also be seen as a natural progression of his interest in overlapping planes and their spatial relationships stimulated by his experience of Cubism. When Nicholson returned to abstract relief carving in the late 1950s, his concern for the balance of intersecting geometric planes was still of paramount importance as he sought increasingly sophisticated means to suggest movement. As Jeremey Lewison writes, ‘in contrast to the earlier reliefs where movement, which was recessive, was created by carving or by colour juxtapositions, in the late reliefs movement is often lateral and recessive as forms collide or lock into each other, the planes being curved or set at angles rather than parallel to the frame’.2 Charles Harrison noted the subtle curved edge of the present work, a feature Nicholson introduced from the mid-1960s, in his introduction to the Waddington Galleries exhibition in 1999: ‘the relief elements appear firmly anchored to a notional ground plane, while a slight curvature in their uppermost edges is sufficient to create a sense of height and of ample surrounding air.’3 Light appears to glow from the upper section of board beneath this curve, accentuating the impression of space and perhaps representing sky, halting above what could be the horizon. The artist’s palette continued to reflect the naturalistic colours and textures of his surroundings, though increasingly refined like the dynamic forms he used, their graceful subtly belying the intensive and physically demanding process of their creation.
1 Peter Khoroche, Ben Nicholson: Drawings and Painted Reliefs, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2002, p. 35. 2 Jeremy Lewison, Ben Nicholson, Rizzoli, New York, 1991, p. 23. 3 Charles Harrison, exh. cat., 1999, op. cit., p. 14.
RICHARD GREEN Richard Green has assisted in the formation and development of numerous private and public collections.
UNITED KINGDOM
C A N A DA
EIRE
Aberdeen: Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Altrincham: Dunham Massey (National Trust) Barnard Castle: The Bowes Museum Bedford: The Higgins Art Gallery & Museum Canterbury: Canterbury City Council Museums Cheltenham: Art Gallery and Museum Chester: Grosvenor Museum Coventry: Herbert Art Gallery & Museum Cowes: Royal Yacht Squadron, Cowes Castle Dedham: Sir Alfred Munnings Art Museum Goodwood: Goodwood House Hull: Ferens Art Gallery Ipswich: Colchester & Ipswich Museums Launceston: Launceston Castle (English Heritage) Leeds: Leeds Museum and Galleries Lincoln: Usher Gallery London: Chiswick House (English Heritage) The Geffrye Museum of the Home Government Art Collection Kenwood (English Heritage) Museum of London National Maritime Museum National Portrait Gallery National Postal Museum Tate Britain The Palace of Westminster The Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum Liverpool: The Walker Art Gallery Lydiard Tregoze: Lydiard House & Park Norwich: Castle Museum & Art Gallery Plymouth: City Museum and Art Gallery Richmond: London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and Orleans House Gallery St Helier: States of Jersey (Office) Southsea: Royal Marines Museum Stirling: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum Winchester: Hampshire County Museums Services York: York City Art Gallery
Fredericton, NB: Beaverbrook Art Gallery Ottawa, ON: The National Gallery of Canada
Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland
U N I T E D S TAT E S O F A M E R I C A
Compiègne: Musée National du Château
FRANCE
Boston, MA: Museum of Fine Arts Channel Islands Harbor, CA: Ventura County Maritime Museum Cincinnati, OH: Cincinnati Art Museum Gainesville, FL: Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida Houston, TX: Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Los Angeles, CA: J Paul Getty Museum New Bedford, MA: New Bedford Whaling Museum New Haven, CT: Yale Center for British Art New York, NY: Dahesh Museum of Art Ocala, FL: Appleton Museum of Art, College of Central Florida Omaha, NE: Joslyn Art Museum Pasadena, CA: Norton Simon Museum Rochester, NY: Genesee Country Village & Museum San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library St Louis, MO: The State Historical Society of Missouri Toledo, OH: Toledo Museum of Art Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art The White House Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Winona, MN: Minnesota Marine Art Museum Worcester, MA: Worcester Art Museum
GERMANY
Berlin: Staatliche Kunsthalle Darmstadt: Hessisches Landesmuseum Hannover: Landesmuseum Karlsruhe: Staatlichen Kunsthalle Speyer am Rhein: Historisches Museum der Pfalz Speyer HOLL AND
Amsterdam: Joods Historisch Museum Rijksmuseum Twenthe: Rijksmuseum Utrecht: Centraal Museum SOUTH AFRICA
Durban: Art Museum S PA I N
Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional del Prado SWITZERL AND
Zurich: Schweizerisches Landesmuseum THAIL AND
Bangkok: Museum of Contemporary Art B E LG I U M
Antwerp: Museum Rockoxnuis Kortrijk: Stadhuis DENMARK
Tröense: Maritime Museum
Subject to ARR (An EU levy paid to the Artist’s estate via an appointed collection agency). Published by Richard Green. © Richard Green (and any applicable image right owners/artists or their estates) 2014. Database right maker: Richard Green. All rights reserved. Paintings are sold subject to our standard terms and conditions of sale, copies of which may be obtained on request. Richard Green is the registered trade mark of Richard Green Old Master Paintings Limited registered in the EU, the USA and other countries.
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