Ben Nicholson

The Artist
Alistair Morton
Cherry Morton, from whom acquired by Claude Harrison, 1962, and thence by descent

Two very tiny strokes of paint are peeling away from the board, one along the right edge and one along the bottom edge. There is a spot of pigment in the lower right quadrant which sits out from the surface but this appears to be the artist's hand. The brown marking in the brown area towards the bottom left is probably the remains of glue. Otherwise the work is in very good condition. Examination under ultra-violet light reveals no sign of retouching. Held behind glass in a white wooden box frame. Jane McAusland the paper conservator and restorer has also inspected the present work.
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After the outbreak of WWII, Hepworth and Nicholson moved down to Cornwall at the invitation of Adrian Stokes and Margaret Mellis, initially staying with them at their house, Little Parc Owles, before moving to Dunluce, another house in Carbis Bay, just after Christmas 1939.

Whilst for Nicholson the move to Cornwall harked back to his earlier trips in the late 1920s, especially those with his then wife Winifred and Christopher Wood in 1928, Hepworth seemed less certain about the move from London, and certainly they were moving themselves away from the small circle of critics, collectors and friends who had been able to offer them such support. St.Ives prior to WWII was a noted convergence point for artists but these were almost all of a traditional manner, such as John Anthony Park and Borlase Smart, and the arrival of these out and out modernists with their London and international connections must have caused a certain level of friction initially (Smart was to later become a friend and supporter of both artists' work).

With the increasing restrictions on materials and travel, and the pressures of a young family, both artists' work during the war years is notable not only for its reduced scale, but also for the way in which both seemed to use the time for a period of reassessment of their own work. For Hepworth, this took the form of an increased emphasis on drawing and its potential for allowing her to develop ideas that would take three-dimensional form after the war. However, Nicholson's work is marked by a parallel process of reinvestigating the abstract themes that he was exploring before the war whilst simultaneously developing a style which fused a new interest in landscape with an abstract vocabulary. Works such as Painting (gouache) 1940 belong to the first group and are notable for the way in which Nicholson almost immediately begins to introduce a more 'landscape inspired' palette into these rigorously constructivist pieces. The present composition, like 1940-42 (Painting) (see lot 76), is one of a number of variants on this form which are known, and through these we can see Nicholson gradually adapting an image that has its roots in the relief painting of 1935-6. However, unlike many of the painted versions of this piece, here Nicholson has incorporated the element of true relief, carving the circle back into the surface to activate the play of light and shadow as an element in the composition.

Alastair Morton (1910-1963), the original owner of the present work was an important figure in the history of modernist design, particularly through his role as artistic director of Edinburgh Weavers from 1932 onwards. A long-time friend of both Hepworth and Nicholson, he formed a substantial collection of modernist works, as well as being a talented artist in his own right.

We are grateful to Sir Alan Bowness for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.