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Lot Essay
Japanese Anenomes is an exquisite example of a subject that Winifred Nicholson took great delight in painting throughout her life: flowers. Labelled as ‘the female Van Gogh’ among her contemporaries, Nicholson’s mastery of floral subjects garnered her much critical acclaim during the late 1920s.
Commenting on her relationship with the subject in 1937, she wrote: ‘I like painting flowers – I have tried to paint many things in many different ways, but my paint brush always gives a tremor of pleasure when I let it paint a flower – and I think I know why this is so. Flowers mean different things to different people – to some they are trophies to decorate their dwellings (for this plastic flowers will do as well as real ones) – to some they are buttonholes for their conceit – to botanists they are species and tabulated categories – to bees they are honey – to me they are the secret of the cosmos’ (W. Nicholson quoted in J.L. Martin, B. Nicholson and N. Gabo (eds.), ‘Unknown Colour’, Circle, London, 1937, p. 216).
Looking to the present work, Nicholson’s predominantly silver-grey palette, evoking the luminosity of moonlight, is accented with vivid colour that describes the flowers and books with a deft virtuosity. The higher vantage point forces the viewer to engage with the subject from an unusual perspective, and, perhaps, draws parallels to the more abstracted work of her husband Ben Nicholson, who employed the use of the interlocking geometric forms in his own interpretations of the still life genre.
Winifred also enjoyed a fruitful exchange of artistic ideas with her father-in-law, William Nicholson. One of the most famous living painters of his generation, Nicholson was a champion of the still life genre. Winifred recalled her time painting with him in the 1920s as ‘a memorably happy time’, and that ‘while she was painting anemones from one side, ‘Father William’ was painting them from the other’ (D. Baxandall, letter to Andras Kalman, 14 June 1987, quoted in J. Nicholson, This is Art and Life: Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, William State-Murray: 1920-1930, London, 2013, p.62).
Nicholson’s striking originality and preoccupation with capturing the unique spirit of an object or a place aligned her practice closely with that of Christopher Wood’s, a painter who became enchanted with her painting from their very first meeting in 1926. Soon after this meeting, Ben and Winifred invited Wood to join them in Cornwall for a few months of painting that became an important period of inspiration for the group. The introduction of ‘window-sill’ paintings to his work, a subject favoured by Winifred since the early 1920s, demonstrates the significant influence of Winifred’s paintings upon Wood.
A review in The Times of a joint show at the Lefevre Gallery in 1928 painted Nicholson’s work in outstanding light: ‘Genius is not a word to be used lightly, but – on the understanding that it applies to aptitude rather than to actual performance – it is the only word for Mrs Winifred Nicholson as a flower painter. She has an uncanny sense of flowers, what they are behind their shapes and colours, as emanations of earth’ (The Times, 6 July 1928). It is undeniable that this rings true almost one-hundred years later.
We are very grateful to Jovan Nicholson for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.
Commenting on her relationship with the subject in 1937, she wrote: ‘I like painting flowers – I have tried to paint many things in many different ways, but my paint brush always gives a tremor of pleasure when I let it paint a flower – and I think I know why this is so. Flowers mean different things to different people – to some they are trophies to decorate their dwellings (for this plastic flowers will do as well as real ones) – to some they are buttonholes for their conceit – to botanists they are species and tabulated categories – to bees they are honey – to me they are the secret of the cosmos’ (W. Nicholson quoted in J.L. Martin, B. Nicholson and N. Gabo (eds.), ‘Unknown Colour’, Circle, London, 1937, p. 216).
Looking to the present work, Nicholson’s predominantly silver-grey palette, evoking the luminosity of moonlight, is accented with vivid colour that describes the flowers and books with a deft virtuosity. The higher vantage point forces the viewer to engage with the subject from an unusual perspective, and, perhaps, draws parallels to the more abstracted work of her husband Ben Nicholson, who employed the use of the interlocking geometric forms in his own interpretations of the still life genre.
Winifred also enjoyed a fruitful exchange of artistic ideas with her father-in-law, William Nicholson. One of the most famous living painters of his generation, Nicholson was a champion of the still life genre. Winifred recalled her time painting with him in the 1920s as ‘a memorably happy time’, and that ‘while she was painting anemones from one side, ‘Father William’ was painting them from the other’ (D. Baxandall, letter to Andras Kalman, 14 June 1987, quoted in J. Nicholson, This is Art and Life: Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, William State-Murray: 1920-1930, London, 2013, p.62).
Nicholson’s striking originality and preoccupation with capturing the unique spirit of an object or a place aligned her practice closely with that of Christopher Wood’s, a painter who became enchanted with her painting from their very first meeting in 1926. Soon after this meeting, Ben and Winifred invited Wood to join them in Cornwall for a few months of painting that became an important period of inspiration for the group. The introduction of ‘window-sill’ paintings to his work, a subject favoured by Winifred since the early 1920s, demonstrates the significant influence of Winifred’s paintings upon Wood.
A review in The Times of a joint show at the Lefevre Gallery in 1928 painted Nicholson’s work in outstanding light: ‘Genius is not a word to be used lightly, but – on the understanding that it applies to aptitude rather than to actual performance – it is the only word for Mrs Winifred Nicholson as a flower painter. She has an uncanny sense of flowers, what they are behind their shapes and colours, as emanations of earth’ (The Times, 6 July 1928). It is undeniable that this rings true almost one-hundred years later.
We are very grateful to Jovan Nicholson for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.