Sir William Nicholson 1872-1949

The present painting appears to be one of a group of paintings dating to 1909 –1913 and taking the view across the Sussex Downs and the coast as their subject. This particular scene appears to be taken from Kingston Hill looking north across the dry valley where the Brighton to Lewes railway runs.

In the summer of 1909, Nicholson and his wife had moved into The Grange at Rottingdean, and although he continued to work at his portrait practice, during the following four years, he produced a body of small-scale landscape work. In many of these paintings, Nicholson balances the land and sky perfectly, reducing the element of a ‘view’ to a minimum and concentrating on the effects of differing light conditions. The present painting is rather unusual in its inclusion of such an obvious modern motif as a train, but with his usual oblique talent for suggestion, the presence of the train is only announced by the trail of steam it leaves. As a viewer, we know that the train has almost certainly gone.