Ben Nicholson and Winifred Nicholson: Art and Life

BEN NICHOLSONWINIFRED NICHOLSON

CHRISTOPHER WOOD • ALFRED WALLIS

WILLIAM STAITE MURRAY

ART AND LIFE 1920–1931

Art and Life examines the artistic partnership of Ben Nicholson and

Winifred Nicholson in the 1920s and their friendship and collaboration

with Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis and the potter William Staite Murray.

Inspired by each other, the Nicholsons experimented furiously and often

painted the same subject, one as a colourist the other more interested in

form. Winifred wrote of her time with Ben, ‘All artists are unique and can

only unite as complementaries not as similarities’.

In the principal essay Jovan Nicholson explores the way ideas flowed

between the Nicholsons and Christopher Wood when they painted side

by side in Cumberland and Cornwall, with particular emphasis on their

meeting with Alfred Wallis in St Ives in 1928. Sebastiano Barassi focuses on

the Nicholsons’ visits to Paris, Italy and Switzerland in the early 1920s, while

the potter Julian Stair examines the importance of William Staite Murray,

one of the most successful potters at that time. All three essays draw

on new research based on previously unpublished letters, photographs

and other material. All the works are illustrated in full colour, each with

comments relating to the work by the artists and their critics. The majority

of the items come from private collections, and many are previously

unseen. Art and Life provides unique and personal insights into these

innovative and important artists.

Jovan Nicholson is an independent art historian with a particular

interest in modern British art. He has worked on various projects with

The Henry Moore Foundation, the Barbican Art Gallery, the Russian

Museum, St Petersburg, the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow and the British

Council, organising exhibitions between Russia and Britain. He has been

an adviser on a number of exhibitions, books and other publications about

Winifred Nicholson and is an acknowledged expert on her work. He is a

grandson of Ben and Winifred Nicholson.

Sebastiano Barassi is Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at

The Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green. From 2001–12 he was Curator

of Collections at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, and prior to that

he worked at the Courtauld Institute Gallery in London. He has written

extensively about early-twentieth-century British art.

Julian Stair is a potter and writer. He has exhibited internationally over

the last thirty years and has worked in over twenty public collections

including the Victoria and Albert Museum, American Museum of Art and

Design and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Netherlands.

He completed his PhD at the Royal College of Art in 2002 and has

published extensively.

Philip Wilson Publishers

an imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd

6 Salem Road

London W2 4BU

www.philip-wilson.co.uk

BEN N

ICHO

LSON

W

INIFR

ED N

ICHO

LSON

A

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AN

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Jovan N

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3001837817819

ISBN 978-1-78130-018-3

Front cover:

Ben Nicholson

c. 1930 (Cornish port)

Oil on card

21.5 x 35 cm

Kettle’s Yard

Back cover:

Winifred Nicholson

Bankshead Flowers in an Alabaster Jar (detail)

c. 1928

Oil on canvas

56 x 45 cm

Private Collection, on loan to mima, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

Art and Life jkt 1928 Cornwall 34 PB.indd 1 23/8/13 11:19:25

B E N N I C H O L S O N

WINIFRED NICHOLSON

C H R I S TO P H E R WO O D

A L F R E D W A L L I S



B E N N I C H O L S O N

WINIFRED NICHOLSON

C H R I S TO P H E R WO O D

A L F R E D W A L L I S



JOVAN N ICHOLSONwith essays by SEBASTIANO BARASS I and JUL IAN STAIR

Published on occasion of the exhibition Art and Life: Ben Nicholson, Winifred

Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis and William Staite Murray, 1920–1931

This exhibition is a collaboration between Dulwich Picture Gallery, London,

Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, and Leeds Art Gallery.

Leeds Museums and Galleries (Leeds Art Gallery) 18 October 2013 –

12 January 2014

Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge 15 February – 11 May 2014

Dulwich Picture Gallery 4 June – 21 September 2014

This exhibition tour has been made possible for all venues by the provision

of insurance through the Government Indemnity Scheme. The co-organisers

would like to thank HM Government for providing Government Indemnity

and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England

for arranging the indemnity.

© Dulwich Picture Gallery 2013

Text © the authors 2013

Published by Philip Wilson Publishers

an imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd

6 Salem Road

London W2 4BU

www.philip-wilson.co.uk

Distributed in the United States and Canada exclusively by Palgrave

Macmillan

175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78130-017-6

ISBN Softcover: 978-1-78130-018-3

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission

of the publishers.

The right of Jovan Nicholson, Sebastiano Barassi and Julian Stair to be

identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by the authors in

accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Designed by Caroline and Roger Hillier, The Old Chapel Graphic Design,

www.theoldchapelivinghoe.com

Printed and bound in Spain by Grafo S.A.

Frontispiece: Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Westmorland, early 1920s,

Tate Archive

pp. 50–51: Winifred Nicholson, Polyanthus and Cineraria (detail), 1921,

oil on canvas, 51× 59 cm, Private Family Collection

pp. 68–69: Winifred Nicholson, Cumberland Landscape (detail), c. 1926,

oil on canvas, 50.8 × 61cm, Private Collection

pp. 112–13: Winifred Nicholson, Boat on a Stormy Sea (detail), 1928,

oil on canvas, 55 × 80 cm, Private Collection

pp. 148–49: Christopher Wood, Le Phare (detail), 1929, oil on board,

53.5 × 79 cm, Kettle’s Yard

CONTENTS

Author’s Acknowledgements 6

Directors’ Foreword 7

THE ALLURE OF THE SOUTH: THE N ICHOLSONS IN ITALY AND SWITzERLAND, 1920–23 Sebastiano Barassi 9

FACT IVE PLAST IC ITY: THE ABSTRACT POTTERY OF WILL IAM STAITE MURRAY Julian Stair 19

ART AND L IFE Jovan Nicholson 25

Catalogue

LUgANO AND LONDON 50

CUMBERLAND 68

CORNWALL: FEOCk AND ST IVES 112

D IVERgINg PATHS 148

Chronology 184

References 188

Index 189

Credits 192

Supported by

F R I E N D S

The Elizabeth Cayzer Charitable Trust

8 C U M B E R L A N D 9

Both Winifred Roberts and Ben Nicholson grew up in environ-

ments which nurtured art appreciation and gave them access to

a wide range of artworks, artists and like-minded spirits. Winifred

was born in Oxford in 1893. Her father, Charles Roberts, was a high-

ranking politician; elected MP for Lincoln, and later for Derby, he

served in Herbert Henry Asquith’s Liberal government as Under-

Secretary of State for India and Comptroller of the Household.

Her mother, Lady Cecilia Howard, was the daughter of George

Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle, who had combined a political career as

Liberal MP with significant achievements as an artist and supporter

of the arts. The son of Mary Parke, an amateur watercolourist

who had studied under Peter de Wint, he had been a founding

member of the Etruscan school of painting, patronised the Pre-

Raphaelite Brotherhood and served for thirty years as a Trustee of

the National Gallery in London. Lady Cecilia was a liberal activist

and a gifted amateur painter herself. Through her maternal family

Winifred had access to the collections housed at Castle Howard,

which had been gathered over the previous three centuries and

included paintings by Titian, Annibale Carracci, Canaletto, Joshua

Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. She often painted with her

grandfather, and when he died in 1911 she inherited his paint box.

Up to that point Winifred’s education had been typical for a

girl of her class, and her family had encouraged her to take up

painting. In 1912 she enrolled at the recently established Byam

Shaw School of Art in London. Named after one of its founders,

the history painter John Byam Shaw, the school promoted a

fairly conventional approach, focussing on painting and life

drawing. Although this training gave Winifred a solid technical

grounding, early on she began to experience a tension between

her enjoyment of loosely and generously applied colour and the

constraints of the traditional techniques she was taught. Typical

of her style at this time is the watercolour Lincoln Cathedral (Prior

Wimbush’s Tomb), which she exhibited at the 1914 Royal Academy

Summer Exhibition in London.1

One of Winifred’s most formative early experiences was a

visit in 1919–20 to India, Sri Lanka and Burma with her father

and sister Christina. In later years she acknowledged this trip

as the moment her sense of light and colour truly came to life,

and when she realised that watercolour, with its immediacy and

speed of execution, was her favourite medium. While delighting

in the exotic landscapes and atmosphere, on the Subcontinent

Winifred also had her first unmediated encounter with non-

Western art, finding the use of colour in Indian miniatures

especially inspiring. The exposure to new cultures and artistic

traditions also gave Winifred valuable insights into the role her

T H E A L L U R E O F T H E S O U T H : T H E N I C H O L S O N S I N I TA L Y AND SWITzERLAND, 1920–23

SEBASTIANO BARASS I

Winifred Nicholson, Cyclamen and Primula (detail), c. 1922–23

Fig. 1 Winifred Nicholson, Indian Sketchbook, 1919–20, watercolour on

paper, 23 x 30.5 cm, Private Collection

1 0 1 1T H E A L L U R E O F T H E S O U T H : T H E N I C H O L S O N S I N I T A L Y A N D S W I T z E R L A N D , 1 9 2 0 – 2 3 T H E A L L U R E O F T H E S O U T H : T H E N I C H O L S O N S I N I T A L Y A N D S W I T z E R L A N D , 1 9 2 0 – 2 3

engaged to Ben. It was at this point that, perhaps seeking a clear

break from the past, Ben fully embraced more recent art, primarily

French but also, for a brief period, British – in particular Vorticism.

With both of them engaged in artistic experimentation and

at the start of their independent lives, Ben and Winifred found in

each other an accomplice and like-minded partner with whom

to share their respective attempts to distance themselves from

the tradition within which they had grown up. They first met

in the summer of 1920 at Boars Hill, near Oxford. Soon after,

Winifred invited Ben to join her on a family holiday to Devon and

Cornwall, during which they drew and painted side by side on a

few occasions. A drawing by Ben and a watercolour by Winifred

of the same view near Tippacott show how already at this

stage they had quite defined and different artistic personalities.

Winifred’s emphasis is strongly on colour, with a palette and

composition reminiscent of Cézanne and the Fauves. Ben opted

for monochromatic line drawing, with a use of gentle perspectival

distortion borrowed from recent French art or, possibly, from pre-

Renaissance Italian painters. The difference is emphasised by the

choice of medium: more painterly watercolour for Winifred, a

draughtsman’s pencil for Ben (pages 52 and 53).

On 5 November 1920 Winifred and Ben were married at

St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. For their honeymoon they

travelled to Southern Europe. Their first destination was Italy,

where they visited Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Amalfi, Pisa,

Portofino, Rapallo and Genoa. With typical youthful exuberance,

in his accounts to friends and family Ben was rather dismissive

of the art he and Winfred saw in Italy: ‘Most of the “show” pieces

we’ve seen – palaces, pictures & such like – are disappointing …

It is astonishing how few really 1st class A1 painters there have

been. And people like Tintoretto, Fra Angelico & Michel Angelo

have vastly … overrated reputations.’4 Winifred later recalled

that, when they visited the Uffizi in Florence, the only work that

impressed them was a small Tudor portrait.5

While this bravado is understandable in young artists intent

on rejecting academicism and historical tradition, there is

evidence that both Ben and Winifred were actually quite taken

with some of the art they saw in Italy. Three scrapbooks compiled

by Ben around this time show that alongside more recent artists

such as Picasso, Cézanne, Braque, Rousseau, Van Gogh, Manet,

Matisse, Arp and Miró, he collected reproductions of paintings

by Benozzo Gozzoli, Giotto, Alesso Baldovinetti, Domenico

Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo di Credi, Fra Bartolomeo, Tintoretto and

Paolo Uccello, as well as Goya, El Greco and Deruet.6 One of the

most telling inclusions is Piero della Francesca’s Double Portrait

of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino of 1465–72. Typically for Piero,

the relationship between figure and landscape is very carefully

explored, with certain visual ambiguities, such as the formal

continuity of Battista Sforza’s jewels with the lines of fortifications

and hills in the background, echoing the compression of

different planes of the picture in paintings by Ben and Winifred

from around this time. This is in fact one of several works in the

scrapbooks to focus on the relationship between figures in the

foreground and landscape in the background. As if to emphasise

this point, the double portrait is split over two pages, with each

half juxtaposed to photographs of landscape.

Many of the artists featured in the scrapbooks had for some

time been the subject of renewed attention by critics seeking

alternative historical and cultural models to regenerate what they

considered an exhausted artistic tradition. In Britain one of the most

fervent champions of the so-called ‘primitives’, a loose term used

to describe artists as disparate as African tribal sculptors and pre-

Renaissance Italian painters, was Roger Fry. Highly respected for his

Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910–12, in 1920 Fry published

fascination with pictorial light could play in infusing spiritual

qualities into her work.

Ben Nicholson’s family was perhaps not as eminent as

Winifred’s, but it shared with hers a great appreciation of the

arts and links with a remarkable circle of artists. Ben was born

in 1894 in Denham, Buckinghamshire, to William Nicholson and

Mabel Pryde. William, the youngest son of an industrialist and

Conservative MP for Newark, was then at the beginning of a

career which would see him become one of Britain’s best known

still life and portrait painters. In 1888–89 he had attended Hubert

von Herkomer’s art school at Bushey, where he met his future

wife Mabel, who came from a family with a long tradition of

artists. Two years later he went to Paris to study at the Académie

Julian, but after only six months he returned to England and

married Mabel. At the time of Ben’s birth William worked as an

illustrator and printmaker with his brother-in-law James Pryde,

in a partnership known as the Beggarstaff Brothers. From early

on the Nicholsons had a rich social life and moved in the same

circles as Walter Sickert, William Orpen, William Rothenstein,

Rudyard Kipling and Edwin Lutyens. Mabel was a talented

painter herself, mostly of portraits, but the growing pressures of

family life meant that she was forced to treat art as little more

than a hobby.

From an early age Ben had to adjust to a lifestyle which

required frequent travel and changes of circumstances, some

quite unsettling. Having visited France on family holidays in his

early childhood, aged nine he was sent to a boarding school in

Norfolk. At the age of sixteen, in the autumn of 1910, he enrolled

at the Slade School of Art in London, which he left after just over

one year; he had found its teaching, focussed on history painting

and drawing from life and the antique, too formal. However, this

experience gave Ben contacts that were to play an important

part later in his life: he befriended fellow students Paul Nash and

Christopher Nevinson, and met the young lecturer of Appreciation

of Old Masters, Roger Fry, who was at the time working on one of

the most influential exhibitions in the history of twentieth-century

British art, Manet and the Post-Impressionists.2 Probably because

of his young age, Ben did not make much of these contacts, but

being an art student he must have at least realised the significance

of some of the ideas and debates around him.

After leaving the Slade, Ben spent the following three years

studying languages in France (Tours), Italy (Milan) and Portugal

(Madeira). Having been exempted from military service due

to a severe form of asthma, in 1917 he went to New York for a

tonsillectomy, later visiting Chicago and Pasadena. Following the

deaths of his brother Antony in action and his mother Mabel in the

influenza pandemic, he returned to England in September 1918.

During his travels Ben had some time to paint, and occasionally

he mailed a work to his father for comment; William invariably

dismissed his efforts as technically inadequate. Much has been

written about the fact that Ben’s early paintings appear to be driven

by a desire to compete with his father, with whom at times he had

a fraught relationship. The few surviving works from this period

suggest that Ben was then a fairly conservative painter, working in a

style quite close to William’s. He painted mostly rather conventional

still lifes, although from 1917 he began to show an interest in

more current trends, in particular in portraiture and landscape. As

Norbert Lynton pointed out, these early works share an austerity

reminiscent of the sombre mood of Mabel’s paintings. Ben later

described them as ‘slick and “Vermeer”.’3

Ben’s definitive rejection of Edwardian glossy naturalism came

around 1919–20. This shift coincided with a period of painful

personal crisis, which culminated in October 1919 with William’s

marriage to Edie Stuart-Wortley, who a year earlier had been

Fig. 2 Ben Nicholson, 1917 (portrait of Edie), oil on canvas, Sheffield

Galleries and Museums Trust

Fig. 3 Pages from Ben Nicholson’s scrapbook, early 1920s, Private Collection


on his photos & is fairly moderate 7th rate. But they (bar

select few) have all lost the pt of painting & are ‘modern’

dated, local. It is all froth. And certainly lack one of the

main fundamentals which is SINCERITY.14

With the benefit of hindsight and more maturity, Winifred

recognised the importance of these visits to Paris. The city was

‘electric with renovation – at every turn there was a genius and

transformation. Its creative energy was not to be believed, so

we always went back to Villa Capriccio and brooded our ideas.’15

Besides, it was not just contemporary art that made an impact on

the Nicholsons: they also visited several of the city’s museums,

with Ben singling out Paolo Uccello as ‘probably the best of the

lot’ in the Louvre.16

Back in Switzerland, the exposure to such a broad range

of new ideas and work, combined with the immersion in the

beautiful landscapes of the Alps and the strong light of the South,

brought about remarkable creative spells. Letters to friends and

family made frequent references to the intensity of their activity.

Ben: ‘O Lord, have we worked – yes we have. Any quantity + any

quality.’17 And Winifred:

We have been painting in the snow lately, which is fun.

We have done more painting, since we have been here,

than we have ever done before. Ben has done 14 oils and

some drawings. One or two of them have got some funny

new things in them, leading to new developments. We

do absolutely nothing but paint all day, eat supper and

tea at 6.30 wash brushes and prepare canvases, go to bed

and dream painting. Sometimes we go for a walk to look

for new painty things.18

Given their relatively young age, it is not surprising that for Ben

and Winifred these were times of ‘fast and furious experiment’.19

Their main source of inspiration was recent French art, though

it took them, Ben in particular, a while to warm to Cubism.

Quite predictably, Cézanne and Picasso were two of the biggest

influences, and perhaps more surprisingly both Winifred and Ben

admired Derain’s post-Fauve still lifes, a few of which appear in

the scrapbooks.20 Evidence can be found in a work like Ben’s 1922

(bread) (fig. 4), which fuses elements borrowed from Derain and

Bonnard with a Cézanne-inspired composition of objects on a

sloping tabletop. Typically for this time, the painting displays a

a seminal work for the study of ‘primitivism’, Vision and Design. The

book is a collection of essays written over the previous twenty years

in which Fry analyses the work of different artists through his theory

of significant form, with the aim of encouraging the development

of a non-referential art that does ‘not seek to imitate form, but to

create form; not to imitate life, but to find an equivalent for life.’7

These ideas resonated in particular with the younger generation of

artists who, like Winifred and Ben, wanted to develop new idioms

and no longer regarded the accuracy of representation as a priority.

The Nicholsons were certainly aware of Fry’s writings, and tellingly

many of the artists who appear in the scrapbooks also feature

in Vision and Design: the Post-Impressionists, of course, but also

Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello and El Greco.8 Winifred

and Ben’s correspondence from this time confirms that they were

eagerly studying artists and art forms from different periods and

parts of the world.9

Following their tour of Italy, in December 1920 the Nicholsons

rented (and later bought, with the help of Winifred’s father) a house

above Lake Lugano in Switzerland. Villa Capriccio at Castagnola is

just a few miles from the Italian border and set in the magnificent

landscapes at the foot of the Alps, in an area which Ben had known

and loved since his youth.10 For the next three years this became

the couple’s base on the Continent – in Winifred’s words, their

‘planning place’. This is how she described it:

The country is good to paint, austere mountains and

patterned vineyards, terraced down the hillside with

knobbly willow trees and funny fig trees and springing

fruit trees. Our house has 2 studios. The garden will have a

lot of peaches and cherries in June and July … There are

enough rooms furnished to accommodate (!) 5 persons. 2

in a double bed and one servant. 2 sitting rooms, kitchen,

bathroom.11

The Nicholsons spent extended periods at Castagnola in

winter, painting indoors and outdoors, taking trips to Como and

Milan and going on long walks in search of inspiration. On their

visits to Milan they encountered work which was stylistically quite

similar to contemporary Parisian art – still the most advanced and

influential of the period – but had rather different agendas. Like

their French counterparts, several Italian artists of the second

half of the 1910s and early 1920s responded to the ‘call to

order’ that followed the First World War. The Pittura Metafisica of

De Chirico, Savinio, Carrà and Morandi, for example, rejected the

pre-war Futurist glorification of modernity and the machine in

favour of a return to the past glories of Italian art. These artists

referenced styles and subjects from Classical antiquity, the Middle

Ages and the Renaissance, with a strong emphasis on nostalgia,

timelessness and theatricality – ideas they shared with Picasso’s

post-war work, among others. In a similar vein, in 1921 a group of

Milan-based artists gave themselves the name Novecento Italiano

to suggest a revival of the ages of hegemony of Italian culture, the

Quattrocento and Cinquecento. Now, however, their revisitation

of the past was driven by a strongly politicised agenda, and

the group eventually became an instrument of propaganda for

Benito Mussolini’s Fascism.12

Although Winifred and Ben were not too impressed with

contemporary Italian art, exposure to it did contribute to the

development of their critical sense, in particular with regard to

the notion of incorporating into modern work visual sources

from a historical tradition. In this respect Milan also offered

important collections of Old Master paintings, most notably the

Pinacoteca di Brera, whose displays include works such as Piero

della Francesca’s Montefeltro Altarpiece (1472–74) and Giovanni

Bellini’s Pietà (1460), which are likely to have appealed to the

Nicholsons.13

On the way from and back to Britain (they spent the summer

months between London and Cumberland), Ben and Winifred

often stopped in Paris, where they could see in the flesh, and

crucially in colour, works by Picasso, Rousseau, Derain, Modigliani,

Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Matisse. This gave them much

food for thought and visual material to experiment with, even

though Ben was again quite disparaging of what they saw:

Paris is choc a block full of

2nd rate

3rd “

4th “

5th “

6th “

7th “

8th “

& 198th rate modern work … Modigliani is good example

of No. 2.

Derain, Picasso, Matisse have had the impertinence to

contribute a no. of No. 1’s. Dufy in original is not a patch

Fig. 4 Ben Nicholson, 1922 (bread),

oil on canvas, 68.5 x 75.6 cm,

Tate, London 2013


very deliberate technical rawness and restrained use of colour,

symptomatic of Ben’s desire to abandon the sophistication of

earlier art.

Another Parisian influence was Henri Rousseau and his

much admired formal simplification and directness, which both

Nicholsons tried to combine with a Fauve-inspired use of bold,

concentrated colours, for example in Ben’s c. 1921 (pink house

in the snow) and Winifred’s Castagnola (Red Earth) (see page 59)

of c. 1923. These paintings suggest a growing interest in Fry’s

theories, both for their focus on significant form and for their

subtle references to the Italian ‘primitives’.

Ben’s 1921–c. 1923 (Cortivallo, Lugano) (page 55) is arguably

the most successful assimilation and synthesis of this wide range

of ideas and styles. The composition, based on two slightly off-

centre trees and a bright red house, is reminiscent of Cézanne’s

landscapes. The focus on the red house is emphasised by the

otherwise restrained palette, which appears influenced by the

delicate use of colour and intense light of Piero della Francesca’s

altarpieces. Here, as in other works from the period, we see

Ben’s emerging interest in the materiality of the medium and

the canvas; pencil lines scar deeply the thin paint layer, and

the primed canvas is visible in places. This fascination with the

unfinished may be a further reference to Cézanne, and it hints

at Ben’s early concentration on the visual and physical layering

of the image, which remained important throughout his career.

In terms of subject matter, their own accounts suggest

that the Alps themselves were a great source of inspiration.

They painted numerous landscapes and still lifes set against

the local vistas, often bringing the two together through the

compositional device of the open window. Continuing the

practice started during their first trip to Western England, in the

Ticino the Nicholsons often depicted the same view. As with

the Tippacott works, the comparison of two paintings made

at Castagnola in 1923 offers useful insights into the two artists’

ongoing conversations and shared interests, but it also points to

emerging stylistic differences.

Winifred arguably found an individual style before Ben, who

effectively carried on experimenting until the early 1930s. Among

her most accomplished works are Mughetti (fig. 7) and Cyclamen

and Primula (see page 54), which she painted during the winter

of 1922–23 and belong in a series she described as ‘sunlight in

white paper.’21 The pot of flowers wrapped in tissue paper and

set on a windowsill was the ideal format to bring together some

of Winifred’s favourite themes: the study of luscious colour, the

exploration of the relationship between interior and exterior,

foreground and background, still life and landscape, and through

these the layering and breaking down of the image. Winifred

adopted in these paintings a similar principle to Ben’s 1921–c. 1923

(Cortivallo, Lugano): the areas of intense colour of the flowers

are the compositional focus not only because of their central

position, but also because they are surrounded by areas of colder

tones – the intense white of the wrapping paper, the blues and

greys of the wintry Alpine landscape. In Cyclamen and Primula the

points of the paper serve as visual rhymes with the mountains,

Fig. 5 Ben Nicholson, 1923 (Castagnola), oil on board, 56 x 69 cm,

National Galleries of Scotland

Fig. 6 Winifred Nicholson, Castagnola, c. 1923, oil on board, 61 x 76 cm,

Private Collection


establishing a connection between near and far which echoes

works such as the Derain in Ben’s scrapbook and, more broadly,

Cubist and Fauve still lifes. The almost sculptural faceting of the

wrapping paper in Mughetti suggests that Winifred was at this

time studying the idiom of analytical Cubism.

It has been observed that the simplicity and limited range

of their subjects, and the abandonment of established ideas of

quality and finish were the result of the Nicholsons’ desire to adopt

a more modest lifestyle.22 If we interpret this as the consequence

of their aspiration to move away from their respective artistic and

familial traditions, it is worth adding that while their experiments

with different painting styles were somewhat typical of young

artists in search of an individual idiom, their choice of subjects

was often much more personal. Ben, for example, challenged

the tradition he was reacting against on its favourite grounds,

concentrating on the themes of landscape and still life for which

his father was famous. On the other hand Winifred, who was

animated by a very different sensitivity, found flowers the perfect

subject to combine her interest in colour with the aspiration to

give a spiritual dimension to her art.23

Because Ben destroyed almost all of his work from this period,

it is not easy to make a detailed assessment of his interaction and

exchanges with Winifred.24 However, the very fact that he either

destroyed or painted over so many of his early paintings, whereas

Winifred retrospectively looked at hers as some of the most

accomplished of her career, suggests that at this point she was a

more advanced artist, and perhaps the leading half in the couple’s

experiments.25 Her assessment of their own work and of that by

other artists often seems more balanced than Ben’s youthfully

exuberant views. The artistic output itself does suggest that

Winifred found quite quickly a style she was satisfied with and

stuck with it for the rest of her career with little deviation, whereas

Ben continued to experiment furiously through the 1920s and,

in a sense, until the end of his life. It is possible that Winifred’s

assuredness allowed Ben to feel comfortable wandering off

in many different directions. And, as he later acknowledged,

she played an important part in the development of his

understanding of colour.26 Conversely, Winifred’s art appears to

have benefited greatly from Ben’s sense of adventure, restlessness

and unstoppable desire to see and try new things.

This first experience of life and travel abroad was a formative

one for both Winifred and Ben, but it was short lived. The high

running costs of Villa Capriccio, and the desire to be closer to

their families and on a livelier art scene eventually drove the

couple back to Britain. It is also likely that the rise to power of

Fascism in Italy and the ongoing unrest in the Balkans influenced

their decision, if anything because of the restrictions these put on

their ability to travel around Southern Europe more widely. Yet for

all its brevity this turned out to be a very important period in the

personal and creative development of both artists. As Winifred

noted, this was the time when ‘Ben’s sense of the balance of

space and the rhythm of forms in space evolved in the free space

of mountain and sky – my sense of rainbow was given to me by

the golden light of the sun.’27

NOTES

1 Reproduced in Christopher Andreae, Winifred Nicholson, Lund

Humphries, Aldershot, 2009, p. 38.

2 The exhibition opened on 5 November 1910 at the Grafton Gallery in

London.

3 Norbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, Phaidon Press, London, 1993, p. 19.

4 Ben Nicholson to Wilfrid Roberts, 1 December 1920, quoted in Jeremy

Lewison (ed.), Ben Nicholson, Tate Gallery, London, 1993, p. 16.

5 Winifred Nicholson, ‘Moments of Light’, in Andrew Nicholson (ed.),

Unknown Colour; Paintings, Letters, Writings by Winifred Nicholson, Faber &

Faber, London, 1987, p. 33.

6 Two scrapbooks are at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, cat.

nos. BN 52 and BN 53. BN 52 is dated ‘Castagnola 1922’, BN 53

‘Castagnola 1921’ (but it includes works from as late as 1932). The third

scrapbook, undated but also from the early 1920s, is in a private

collection. In addition to reproductions of artwork (among which are

Winifred’s Mughetti and Cyclamen and Primula), the scrapbooks include

several photographic portraits of artists and composers (Picasso,

Braque, Stravinsky, Poulenc and Massine), images of tennis players and

family snapshots.

7 Roger Fry, Vision and Design, Chatto & Windus, London, 1920, p.157.

8 Although the Nicholsons acquired a copy of Vision and Design in 1921

or 1922, it is likely that they were by then already familiar with Fry’s ideas,

as they had been widely discussed in British art circles for over a decade.

9 In their letters to E. J. Hooper from 1921–23 (Tate Archive, London) Ben

and Winifred often mentioned books they were reading. Subjects

include Cubism, Picasso, Braque, Derain, Cézanne, Rousseau, Van Gogh,

Gauguin, Daumier, Rodin, El Greco, Scythian art, African tribal art,

Nevinson, Epstein, Vorticism and Massine’s ballet La boutique fantasque.

10 Writing more than forty years later, Ben described how he had

developed a love for the wintry Swiss landscape early in his life: ‘Deep

dark brown mountains snow capped, & in the evening a miraculous,

light pale-blue sky & darker blue lake below & a light mist between &

small lit up clouds on the horizon & winter trees against all this. In fact

this is the real Ticino for me & not the summer. I still remember vividly

the impact of looking out of the window at this landscape 2 AM

(1913 — — —) with a full winter moon.’ Ben Nicholson to Herbert Read,

7 February 1964, Read Archive, McPherson Library, University of Victoria,

Victoria BC, Canada.

11 Winifred Nicholson to E. J. Hooper, Easter Monday 1921, Tate Archive,

London. Winifred described in detail life at Villa Capriccio in the notes

‘Moments of Light’, in Andrew Nicholson (ed.), Unknown Colour;

Paintings, Letters, Writings by Winifred Nicholson, Faber & Faber, London,

1987, pp. 33–38.

12 Ben was especially critical of the contemporary art he saw in Milan,

possibly because of the political overtones. In a letter to Lady Cecilia

Roberts, written around 1923 and quoted in Jeremy Lewison (ed.),

Ben Nicholson, Tate Gallery, London, 1993, p. 20, he refers to Italian artists

as ‘experimenters experimenting without progress in the same old way.’

13 Echoes of Bellini’s positioning of the hand of Christ over the marble

slab in the foreground – which creates the illusion of the figure entering

the space of the viewer – can be found in Ben’s c. 1924 (Balearic Isles),

Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge.

14 Ben Nicholson to E. J. Hooper, 28 April [1922], Tate Archive, London.

15 Winifred Nicholson, ‘Moments of Light’, in Andrew Nicholson (ed.),

Unknown Colour; Paintings, Letters, Writings by Winifred Nicholson, Faber &

Faber, London, 1987, p. 36.

16 Ben Nicholson to E. J. Hooper, 25 January 1922, Tate Archive, London.

17 Ben Nicholson to E. J. Hooper, 3 April [1923], Tate Archive, London.

18 Winifred Nicholson to E. J. Hooper, c. 25 January 1922, Tate Archive,

London.

19 Ben Nicholson to John Summerson, 4 January [1944], Tate Archive,

London.

20 One in particular, Still Life in Front of the Window, 1912–13 (Pushkin

Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; reproduction in scrapbook BN 52,

Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge), must have appealed for its theme

of still life on the windowsill and concentration on the relationship

between internal and external space.

21 Winifred Nicholson to E. J. Hooper, 3 April 1923, Tate Archive, London.

22 Chris Stephens, ‘Beginnings’, in Chris Stephens (ed.), A Continuous Line:

Ben Nicholson in England, Tate Publishing, London, 2008, p. 16.

23 Ben explained that his interest in still life did not come from Cubism

but from his father. See ‘Ben Nicholson in Conversation with Vera and

John Russell’, The Sunday Times, 28 April 1963, reprinted in this volume,

p. 65. For Winifred’s interest in flowers, see Winifred Nicholson, ‘The

Flower’s Response’, in Andrew Nicholson (ed.), Unknown Colour:

Paintings, Letters, Writings, by Winifred Nicholson, Faber and Faber,

London, 1987, p. 216, reprinted in this volume p. 106.

24 Writing in 1944, Ben said that ‘only a fraction’ of his work from this

period survived. Ben Nicholson to John Summerson, 4 January [1944],

Tate Archive, London.

25 Of her works of 1922–23 Winifred wrote: ‘I have often wished for

another painting spell like that, but never had one.’ Winifred Nicholson,

‘Moments of Light’, in Andrew Nicholson (ed.), Unknown Colour;

Paintings, Letters, Writings by Winifred Nicholson, Faber & Faber, London,

1987, p. 37.

26 Ben Nicholson cited by Kathleen Raine, in ibid., p. 201.

27 Winifred Nicholson, ‘Moments of Light’, in ibid., p. 36.

Fig. 7 Winifred Nicholson, Mughetti,

c. 1921–22, oil on board,

53.3 x 56.5 cm, Private Collection

1 2 2 1 2 3C O R N W A L L : F E O C k A N D S T I V E SC O R N W A L L : F E O C k A N D S T I V E S

ALFRED WALLIS

Four Luggers and a Lighthouse

c. 1928

Oil on card

16.5 x 26 cm

Private Collection, on loan

to mima, Middlesbrough Institute

of Modern Art

[Wallis] enjoyed talking about his

paintings, speaking of them not

as paintings but as events and

experiences.

BEN NICHOLSON

1943, p. 52

In seventy years’ contact with the

sea awake at any time—day or

night, in darkness or light, storm

or calm, a great deal of experience

must have accumulated, and it is

out of this store that this old man

produced his paintings. When

he painted the sea and a ship

he knew that the ship is feather-

light as compared to the vast

weight of the sea. How was he

to express this in terms of paint,

this very obvious fact so little

realised by other painters? It is not

easy to express and I wrote of it

at length—but I don’t suppose

that Wallis gave it a conscious

thought, for when he painted, his

awareness being so sure, it comes

out right. He knew what it was to

be at sea—entirely and totally—

his paintings carry with them a

ship-feeling, and a land-in-the-

distance feeling and a pitching

and tossing and a passing of

lighthouses and other ships and a

blinding of spray, and a vastness of

sky which somehow seems above

and below.

JIM EDE

1984, p. 214

Old Alfred Wallis of St Ives, who

never saw or cared about a

stretched canvas and never set

foot in an ‘artists’ colour-man’s’,

made discovery after discovery

within the four narrow walls of

his untidy living-room. One day

it was the plastered jamb of the

door; another a long, narrow piece

of building board which turned

up from somewhere; another the

back of the mount of a cheap

Victorian print. Each discovery was

the discovery of an idea, and in the

identity of the painting and the

bit of stuff on which it is spread

is the essential life of a Wallis …

But on different planes one of

Wallis’ cardboards and a Nicholson

canvas have the same character as

being ‘discovered objects’ wrought

into paintings.

JOHN SUMMERSON

1948, p. 9

Wallis had an excellent sense of

composition, and the sail and

steam ships plying the surface

of the ocean have a remarkable

sense of movement and speed. His

pictures have a pleasant rhythm

and remarkable contrasting

colours. The overall images exude

life and vitality while the details are

delightful and evoke a smile.

JUNICHI SHIODA

2007, p. 125

BEN NICHOLSON

c. 1930 (Cornish port)

Oil on card

21.5 x 35 cm

Kettle’s Yard

Dear Mr Wallis,

I have kept 12 of the paintings …

Some of this lot are very beautiful

& we like them very much indeed.

Especially several of the stormy

ones with the moon. I hope you

are keeping very fit & enjoy your

painting. I wish I could come & see

you. Perhaps next summer.

All good wishes

Always

Ben Nicholson

Write & let me know if you are ever

hard up & wanting anything. Can I

send you any colours?

BEN NICHOLSON

letter to Alfred Wallis, 28 July, from

Bankshead (NAL MSL.1980.31.3)


Fig. 36

CHRISTOPHER WOOD

Cornish Window with Pipe

1928

Oil on board

53.3 x 63.5 cm

Private Collection

It is a great moment in my life, I feel

things are becoming really vital and

the studentship has passed, my

work is forming something quite

personal and sure, unlike anybody

else’s, and I don’t think anyone can

paint the pictures I am doing.

This time of quiet has come at

the right moment as before I didn’t

know enough to need it, but now it

is essential as it is now or never, and

I am making a big dash for it.

CHRISTOPHER WOOD

letter to his mother, from St Ives,

28 October 1928 (TGA 773.8)

In his good moments, and it is only

in its good moments that art is

attained, he had the same simple

liveliness and freedom from the

local found in Alfred Wallis.… In

his life he had a sweeping joyous

contact with a visual reality; and

the paintings resulting from this

contact are supremely rational.

He painted them in order to

put down in his enthusiasm, the

reality of the thing he saw; it

was an expression springing

directly from the desire to say

‘I love this’ and not from a motive

of boasting a technical dexterity.

This technical aspect of a painting

did not occupy his thought, for he

was essentially a painter. He was

one of the few English artists who

painted by nature, taking to it, as

he took to all he did, with a simple

directness. To paint a picture, to

eat a dinner, to talk to a friend, to

do a thousand other things, was

just to live, and he lived more

dangerously than most.

JIM EDE

1984, p. 217

ALFRED WALLIS

Ship and Lighthouse

c. 1925

Oil on board

30.5 x 37.5 cm

Private Collection

Inscribed on the reverse by Ben

Nicholson: ‘I think this belonged

originally to Kit Wood + came to

me when he died – it is one of the

first Wallis ptgs BN’

Wallis was an innocent painter,

with a living rather than an

intellectual experience, a power of

direct perception, using his ship’s

paint and scraps of cardboard on

which he worked to achieve that

‘significant form’ of which Mr Clive

Bell once spoke. Each painting was

to him a re-living, a re-presenting,

achieved unconsciously in

regard to the art of painting, but

vividly conscious in its factual

awareness.… Both painters [Wallis

and Wood], from so different a

background, get a shock of joy out

of the reality of what they see. It

comes in upon them with a deep

intensity, and absorbs their whole

nature; they are the thing they are

seeing; then through that strange

miracle which is art they express

themselves on paper or on canvas.

The result, though it has little

reference to actual appearances,

does directly symbolize the most

significant realities of the thing

represented. I find written on an

odd piece of paper: ‘An artist is

one who sees the universality of

the common incidents of life in an

individual manner.’ I don’t know

who wrote this, but it applies

quite clearly to Alfred Wallis and to

Christopher Wood. . . .

With Wallis design comes, with

its subtly variant lines and spaces,

not through experience in the art

of drawing or painting, but from

closeness, almost an identification

with the thing he is drawing.

JIM EDE

1945, p. 46

At the end of 1928 his [Christopher

Wood’s] paintings took on a new

robustness of shape and colour.

Their occasional quirkiness of

positioning and perspective

became positive values. The

lustrous qualities of enamel paint

added variety to their surface

effects. ‘More and more influence

de Wallis, not a bad master though,’

he wrote to the Nicholsons before

he left.

CHARLES HARRISON

1987, p. 6


Fig. 37

CHRISTOPHER WOOD

A Cornish Window

1928

Oil on canvas

56 x 56 cm

Private Collection

BEN NICHOLSON

1929 (fireworks)

Oil on board

30 x 46 cm

The Pier Arts Centre, Orkney

‘The subject matter of “fireworks”

came first to Kit Wood’ [Ben

Nicholson]. This is one of several

paintings of the period 1929–32

when Nicholson was trying out

unusual, often playful subject-

matter in free situations. The still-life

subjects of this group of works

often seem to have been chosen

for their liveliness of decoration or

texture rather than for their strength

of form, as if Nicholson were finding

his own way out of the Cubist still-

life repertoire into a freer grouping

of forms which would allow him

to manipulate pattern, colour and

texture independently on the

surface of the painting. The striped

and spotted decoration on the

mugs, jugs and tablecloths, and the

emblems from playing cards and

lettering from packets, newspapers

or shop-fronts become, as it were,

prised loose and redisposed as

elements on increasingly abstract

pictorial schemes.

CHARLES HARRISON

1969, p. 19

There is a fundamental difference

between the two sorts of picture

[landscape and still life]. The

landscapes preserve most, though

not quite all, of the traditional

structure of nineteenth-century

nature-painting. Not so with the

still-lifes. Sometimes the objects

are flattened out and sited

ambiguously in space; sometimes

the table-top shelves up and

steeply towards the observer;

invariably we see more of the

scene than we could actually

see in life. These elements from

Cézanne and the Cubists co-

habit, however, with something

of the lyrical touch that everyone

admired in his father: in the

Margaret Gardiner collection

there is a painting called Rocket

and Jack in the Box (1929) which

illustrates this ideally. So tender

and unforced is the handling of

the fireworks in question that it

is as if painting had begun again

from the beginning.

JOHN RUSSELL

1969, p. 16


BEN NICHOLSON

1928 (Porthmeor Beach no. 2)

Oil on canvas

45.8 x 52.7 cm

Private Collection

Clearly Wallis appealed to

Nicholson’s romantic (and

modern) valuation of the primitive

and childlike. But more specifically

he was excited by Wallis’s ability

to make his pictures come alive,

partly by the sheer intensity of

his feeling, partly by his method

of working, which allowed the

material make-up of the painting

to be undisguised yet, through the

viewer’s eye, to be transformed

into a vivid experience. This

confirmed Nicholson in his

tendency to stress in his own

paintings the process of their

making, so that they should be

artefacts to be appreciated for

themselves as much for whatever

they might refer to outside

themselves.

PETER kHOROCHE

2002, p. 25

ALFRED WALLIS

Seven Ships at Sail in Harbour

1928

Oil and pencil on board

19 x 26 cm

Private Collection

Inscribed verso ‘By Alfred Wallis,

was among the first batch of ptgs

Kit Wood got from him, from Ben.

1949’

He paints all day – imaginative,

elemental strange pictures

on scraps of cardboard or old

boxes. His simple ferocity makes

most painting look utterly insipid.

WINIFRED NICHOLSON

letter to Cyril Reddihough,

Autumn 1928

The old fisherman of St Ives, Alfred

Wallis … often paints his seas

with earth colours, white and

black, colours which, if gathered

up, will equal in hue or in tone

or by some sort of affinity, the

colour of his boats. But then he

has been a fisherman all his life,

accustomed to conceive the sea

in relation to what lies beneath it,

sand or rock and the living forms

of fish. For him the colour of the

sea is less determined by its glassy

surface that reflects the sky. The

surface of his sea, seen best on

grey days, is the showing also

of what lies under it, and boats

are further showing compact for

carrying men, an elaboration of

the sea-shell, a solid darkness from

depth the final fruit of an organic

progression.

ADRIAN STOkES

1937, p. 64

We may see Wallis’s paintings as

charming, decorative and naïve

images. There is an intuitive

sense of design in his work and

somehow they feel just right. The

shape of the card and the image

are one, all true, but this is only

one side of Wallis; to see no further

would be to miss much of what

Wallis was striving to impart. He

did not paint ‘pretty’ pictures; in

fact often there is a darker side to

his work, a fierceness that gives

them an edge. In his work there

is a real need to communicate,

to tell us how things were

when he was young. ‘Things are

altogether changed … nothing

is like it was,’ he tells Jim Ede in a

letter accompanying a bundle of

paintings.

ROBERT JONES

2007, p. 134


BEN NICHOLSON

1928 (Porthmeor Beach,

St Ives)

Oil and pencil on canvas

90 x 120 cm

Private Collection

They have just sent me some

photos of rather amusing early

work exh. at T.N. [Temple Newsam]

particularly one 1924 abstract ptg

& a 1928 very large, very romantic

ptg of a wild seashore with a wild

horse prancing & a sailing ship,

white lighthouse on a rock & a

sky down in amongst it all & a

Victorian urinoir in the foreground.

This would be interesting next to a

white relief 10 years later.

BEN NICHOLSON

letter to John Summerson

(TGA 20048.1.72.2)

Wallis returned to the theme of

St Ives Bay many times in paintings

which are among the most poetic

of all his work. Most of the St Ives

paintings have a similar format.

In the top right corner is Godrevy

Island with its lighthouse. This

lighthouse provides a beacon for

vessels bound for the port of Hayle

and a warning for the Stones, a

dangerous reef which extends

a mile and a half seawards from

the island. The left-hand side of

each picture is occupied by the

harbour of St Ives and the pier

with its lighthouse at the end of

the quay.… In the bottom right-

hand corner is Hayle Estuary, the

entrance to the port of Hayle, and

Lelant Saltings, used by the fishing

fleet in winter and poor weather as

a safe harbour. Although it is a safe

harbour once inside, the mouth

of the estuary is noted for its

dangerous sand bar. Many boats

have come to grief going over

the bar, and it is essential to know

where the channel is. The

channel through to the harbour

is marked by the bar buoy,

which features in most of Wallis’s

paintings of St Ives Bay. The

buoy would be unimportant to

someone not connected with

the sea, but for the seaman it is

an essential feature.

ROBERT JONES

2006, p. 84

ALFRED WALLIS

St Ives Harbour, Hayle Bay and

godrevy and Fishing Boats

c. 1932–34

Oil on card

64.1 x 45.7 cm

Private Collection

As Nicholson wrote with hindsight:

‘One finds only the influences one

is looking for and I was certainly

looking for that one.’

… What seems particularly to

have interested Ben Nicholson

in Wallis’s paintings is the quality

each conveys as—in his words—

‘an event in its own right’. …

The ‘event’, for Nicholson, was

that moment of transformation in

which ‘cardboard’ becomes ‘sand’,

and ‘object’ becomes ‘work of art’

by virtue of its absorption into an

imaginative world.

CHARLES HARRISON

1987, p. 11

Wallis’s concern for detail shows

up everywhere in his pictures.

For example, he often painted

scenes of large and small fishing

vessels and boats surrounded by

the U-shaped structure of the two

wharves in St Ives, but he used

two different colours for the bay,

whitish gray and brown. In the

painting … St Ives Harbour, Hayle

Bay and Godrevy and Fishing

Boats, the brown is created by

leaving the ground unpainted.

I had thought that the water was

brown because it was muddied

for some reason. However, if one

visits the location of the painting,

the answer is very simple. The

two colours show the different

conditions at high and low tide.

One shows what the bay looks

like when it is entirely filled with

water and the other the condition

of the sandy beach when it is

exposed. This is a familiar scene to

someone who lives by the ocean.

The artist has faithfully portrayed

the Godrevy lighthouse seen off

the coast of St Ives, the lighthouse

and watch tower on the pier,

the seines used off the coast

etc., important places

surrounding the bay,

whether large or small.

JUNICHI SHIODA

2007, p. 126

The Stones

Godrev y L ight

Entrance to Hayle Estuar y

St I ves Harbour

Stennah R iver

T h e S t o n e s

G o d r e v y L i g h t

S t I v e s H a r b o u r

E n t ra n ce t o H a y l e E s t u a r y

S t e n n a h R i v e rC O R N W A L L

S T I V E S B A Y

B a r B u o y

B a r B u o y


WINIFRED NICHOLSON

Boat on a Stormy Sea

1928

Oil on canvas

55 x 80 cm

Private Collection

Then we went to St Ives.… Kit

with Froska, a great friend who

had joined him, had a cottage on

the edge of the Porthmeor beach

where the sea is very wild, and

green and crystalline. The boats

as they pass have dark chocolate

sails. You could see them out of a

tiny window in his bedroom. On

the far horizon passed steamers;

up the channels on the white sand

played ragged children.

WINIFRED NICHOLSON

‘Blue was His Colour’, Unknown Colour,

p. 91

All English people like the sea.

WINIFRED NICHOLSON

Foreword in Christopher Wood, Arts

Council exhibition, 1979

I’m longing for Winifred’s sea

one to come. I remember it as

something very exciting and

lovely. I’m glad to know its one you

like especially. It is exciting when

suddenly someone looks and

sees something from just a little

different angle from anyone else’s

sight in the world.

HELEN SUTHERLAND

letter to Ben Nicholson, 26 December

1928 (TGA 8717.1.2.4696)


ALFRED WALLIS

Schooner and Icebergs

c. 1928

Oil on card

33 x 69 cm, shaped

Private Collection

It is extremely difficult to find in

the visual arts today something

as unselfconscious, as genuine,

as direct and vital as we find in

most primitive art.… If a painting

is worked out within the terms

of its medium then its edge, the

outside edge of the form on

which it is painted or worked, has

a vital importance. The artificial

conditions produced by painting

on a stretched, rectangular canvas,

later to be framed and sent to an

exhibition, have forced painting

out of its true direction and out of

its natural and direct relationship

to our lives, and it is difficult to

understand why so many painters

accept this convention without

question: the entire form of a

painting must be considered just

as the entire form of a sculpture

has to be considered; and it is

this consciousness of the form,

of the total form, in classical

painting which makes possible its

extension into other arts and into

our lives.

BEN NICHOLSON

Artist’s Statement, in David Baxandall,

Ben Nicholson, Methuen, London,

1962

[Wallis] has the power to convey

the exciting continuity of actual

development; the sea-feeling,

the ship-feeling, the land in the

distance, the pitching and tossing

and the passing of lighthouses

and other ships, the smell of ropes

and vastness of sky, the open

sea and the shelter of harbour.

A good painting holds potentially

these other moments to the one

depicted—what I would call the

universal aspect, as opposed to

the local one—and Wallis achieves

this. His painting is felt, as only

great and simple painting is.

JIM EDE

1945, pp. 46–47

In a recent number of Horizon

there was a description of how

Klee brought the warp and woof

of a canvas to life; in much the

same way Wallis did this for an old

piece of cardboard: he would cut

out the top and bottom of an old

cardboard box, and sometimes the

four sides, into irregular shapes,

using each shape as the key to

the movement in a painting, and

using the colour and texture of the

board as the key to its colour and

texture. When the painting was

completed, what remained of the

original board, a brown, a grey, a

white or a green board, sometimes

in the sky, sometimes in the sea, or

perhaps in a field or a lighthouse,

would be as deeply experienced

as the remainder of the painting.

He used very few colours, and

one associates with him some

lovely dark browns, shiny blacks,

fierce greys, strange whites and

a particularly pungent Cornish

green.

BEN NICHOLSON

1943, pp. 50–51

Wallis’s paintings are truly unique.

He painted with marine paint

or oils on scraps of card, board,

or wood, often of irregular

shapes. Some of the shapes are

boldly geometric, trapezoids or

pentagons, and it appears that

they were cut out with scissors.

Compositions were determined

by the shape of the support,

producing an unexpectedly

dynamic and free artistic world

in a small space. In many cases

the orange or brown of the card

or board and the words printed

on it appear through the paint,

creating unexpected effects and

foregrounding the physicality of

the painting. Only a few colours

are used, mostly dark green, navy

blue, dark brown, and white,

and the weightiness of the

tones, combined with the rough

brushwork, make an impression

of strength and wildness on

the viewer.

JUNICHI SHIODA

2007, p. 125

Ships’ records show that Wallis left

the Pride of the West in St John’s

[Newfoundland] and joined the

crew of another West Country

schooner, the Belle Aventure of

Brixham, for a three-month voyage

back across the Atlantic. It takes

little imagination to realise that

conditions could be extremely

harsh aboard these sailing ships.

To be profitable they sailed with

the minimum number of crew

members, perhaps four or five

men, who had to be available day

or night to make sail adjustments,

pump ship, take their turn at the

wheel or tiller etc. Ships could

encounter terrible weather

conditions, particularly in winter,

when crossing the Atlantic. Gales

could go on for weeks. We know

that Alfred Wallis made two

Atlantic crossings and may have

made others. These experiences

formed the memories on which

his paintings were based half a

century later. . . . Off the coast of

Newfoundland he saw icebergs

and they are shown in paintings

as well as details of the ships that

were significant to the seaman.

ROBERT JONES

2007, p. 132


CHRISTOPHER WOOD

Herring Fisher’s goodbye

1928

Oil on board

37 x 59 cm

Private Collection

I think you left just before the

winter weather began. One cannot

tell the season for there is not a

tree, but there is a great feeling

of intensity and usefulness like

a garrison that is working in real

earnest after a lazy peace. All the

summer things have disappeared.

The beach huts all gone, the

windows onto the sea boarded

up in the houses. The vegetable

carts go their endless rounds.

Ripe pears, bananas and the

children making an infernal noise.

The east wind is blowing all the

herrings away from the bay and

times are very bad, so they say,

but everything goes on just the

same each day. I can hear the port

seagulls which are a dense cloud

hovering and flying down on the

guts of thousands of dogfish, small

shark species which they skin

on sort of stands on the edge of

the water. It’s all hard and bloody

but they are a fine lot of people

and give me the same sense of

admiration that the people of the

north do in their different way.

All this is very beautiful but it’s

all opium to me and not a very

constructive humming drumming

thing like St Ives can be.

CHRISTOPHER WOOD

letter to Winifred Nicholson, from

St Ives, Autumn 1928 (TGA 8618.1.43)

St Ives is like a roulette table at the

moment. There is a terrific storm

lashing itself to pieces all round

the place. The sea is no longer

green but dead white and angry

white all over. The sea gulls &

fishing boats are blown about like

bits of paper & the women scuttle

into their houses like frightened

rabbits. Luckily it is the Sabbath &

the men don’t need fear not going

out as they are looked upon as

heroes at this time everyone goes

to the jetty to see them leave for

the herring fishing each afternoon

at 4.30. They look like pirates with

big jack boots up to their thighs

and skin hats with wings to them

like Mercury or was it Mars doesn’t

matter which they look very brave

& dashing as their boats go over

waves like houses that come in

just now round the pier. (I lie in

Froska’s bedroom thinking of new

pictures. The wind rustles past and

whistles in a gruesome manner.)

CHRISTOPHER WOOD

letter to Winifred Nicholson, from

St Ives, Autumn 1928 (WNA)

The boats leave each afternoon

at 4.30 passing out within 5 yards

of the lighthouse so one can see

them well. They stay out in this

dreadful weather till 9 then come

in and go out again at 10 till 5 &

6 in the morning, then they look

after their nets and as they say by

the time they have had a cup of

tea and a smoke its time to start

off again. No sleep on this blasted

job, they say.

CHRISTOPHER WOOD

Letter to Ben Nicholson, from St Ives,

Autumn 1928 (WNA)

His painting reached a higher level

than it had yet done. The ships and

the sea and the fisher people were

painted with imaginative reality.

He would have liked to stay there

for ever.

WINIFRED NICHOLSON


p. 91

The sea is not so much saltwater,

but the ebb and flow and depth

of anguish. Boats are not craft

for the fish trade but courage

itself—gusting off with set sail into

the foul weather to an unknown

destination beyond the horizon.

WINIFRED NICHOLSON

Foreword in Christopher Wood,

Arts Council Exhibition, 1979

The majority of people look no

further than the visual, but the

artist must find and reveal in his

picture of the sea … its immense

changeableness, its volume, its

colour, its smell, its perpetual

movement, and eventually reach

the simple, yet intensely true

statement of these things as seen

in his painting. Nothing is lost

by simplification, everything is

gained. By his remarkable sense

of tone, a sense seldom at fault,

he gives authority to his simplest

statements. A talking brush Kit

Wood had, and talk which was

alive from corner to corner of his

canvas; an easy manipulation

of paint, free but never showy

or slick. He does not clutter his

idea with irrelevant furnishing,

indeed so truly is he master of the

situation that he can leave large

restful spaces for the eye to dwell

upon, spaces held by the force of

his intention.

JIM EDE

1984, p. 218


CHRISTOPHER WOOD

The Fisherman’s Farewell

1928

Oil paint and graphite on plywood

27.9 x 70 cm

Tate

His [Christopher Wood’s] problem

was to create a parallel to visual

facts and not an imitation; his

subjects only excite his fancy

by their pictorial significance.

He loved trees and boats, or the

sea, as things to paint, and he

at once saw them as paintings.

Thus they were ready made, so to

say, but in accomplishment they

were visually far from the chosen

subject. He had the power of

interpretation in a high degree,

and an extraordinary perception

of relevant matter. With these

qualities to help him, the picture

is ready in his instinct; and with his

simple relationship to his medium,

the actual statement follows with

comparative ease, as if they were

almost automatic interpretations

of the trained instinct.

JIM EDE

1984, p. 218

The Fisherman’s Farewell presents

the Nicholson family in front of a

view of St Ives harbour and bay.

As Richard Ingleby has pointed

out, the title may refer to the

departure in October of Ben

Nicholson, who left St Ives a few

days before Winifred, to travel to

London. By bestowing the title of

fisherman on Ben, Wood reveals

his esteem for his fellow artist,

linking him with the people who

they both so respected. The sense

of imminent loss is emphasised

by the harbour behind the figures,

which is cluttered with boats

getting ready to depart.

MATTHEW ROWE

Christopher Wood: a painter between

two Cornwalls, 1997, p. 31

WINIFRED NICHOLSON

The Island, St Ives

1928

Oil on canvas

59.5 x 73.5 cm

The Dartington Hall Trust

Leonard and Dorothy Elmhurst

bought this painting for

Dartington Hall from the Leicester

Galleries exhibition [Paintings

by Winifred Nicholson, Leicester

Galleries, March 1930] and it

has always been known there

as ‘Pilchard Nets’. Certainly a

fisherman lays out his pilchard

nets in the foreground, but no

painting with this title was ever

exhibited. The painting shows

the coastguard station on the

northern point of the Island, St

Ives. It was probably painted

from the hill on which St Nicholas

Chapel stands. The rock with

Godrevy lighthouse is in the

distance. Curving pencil arcs can

be seen all over the surface of the

paint, particularly in the lighter

tonality of the upper half of the

canvas, revealing the way Winifred

Nicholson approached the act of

painting and the planning of a

composition. She made sweeping

gestures with a pencil or crayon

in her hand, and these gestures

resulted in a series of interlocking

or overlapping graphic arcs. They

do not necessarily relate to the

layout of the composition as

painted, but they helped her to

stake out the web of connections

revealed by looking at coloured

objects in a certain light.

JUDITH COLLINS

1987, p. 82

I painted too with the keenest

delight. My little boy ran with bare

feet by the sea. When the winter

set in we had to go. It was a bitter

wrench for me.

WINIFRED NICHOLSON


p. 91

Documents

Ben Nicholson and Winifred Nicholson: Art and Life