Ben Nicholson 1894-1982

Following their marriage in 1920, Ben and Winifred Nicholson spent the first three years of the 1920s between England and their Villa Capriccio at Castagnola. Intermediate vistis to Paris during the vital years of the Kahnweiler sales in 1921 and 1923 were crucial in making much of the artistic trends of pre-war Paris known to them. Executed in 1928, the stylised yet simplified line and flattened perspective of Still life with Jug immediately belies Nicholson's knowledge and understanding of synthetic cubism whilst the tonal emphasis on the various facets of the fruit reflects his awareness of Cézanne's exploration of  underlying form and geometry.

Christopher Wood first visited Ben and Winifred at their home in Bankshead, Cumberland in 1928, the same year as the present work. Winifred recalls that Wood specifically impressed on them his technique of 'painting on coverine...it dries fast, you can put it over old pics' (Winifred Nicholson, Kit, unpublished memoir, TGA 723.100, p.25). Evident in the background of the present work, it created a firm painting ground, visible beneath the painted image whilst at the same time highlighting the material nature of the board itself achieving a powerful immediacy. 

As well as Wood's influence, it was whilst living and working alongside Winifred at Bankshead that the still life theme became a particular concern for Nicholson during the 1920s and he cannot have failed to have absorbed her treatment of the theme (see lot 41) and 'of course, I owe a lot to my father especially to his poetic idea and to his still life theme' (see lot 2; Nicholson, 'The Life and Opinions of an English Modern', The Sunday Times, 23rd April 1963).  Like Nicholson's earlier still life, Goblet and Two Pears (1924, Coll. Kettle's Yard, Cambridge) the present work demonstrates his pared down approach to the objects before him which ultimately resulted in his first carved board abstracts of the 1930s and is also indicative of the cubist inspired interlocking forms and lines that were to become a characteristic trademark of his style (see lots 111 and 136).