Ben Nicholson

Sir John Summerson, London
Gimpel Fils, London
Acquired from the above on February 1, 1957

Venice, XXVIIème Exposition Biennale Internationale des Beaux Arts, 1954, no. 459
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum; Paris; Brussels, British Council, Fine Arts Department, Ben Nicholson, 1954-55, no. 16
Houston, Texas, Contemporary Arts Museum, The Sphere of Mondrian, 1957
Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Ben Nicholson: Fifty Years of his Art, 1978-79

Lund Humphries, Ben Nicholson, Paintings, Reliefs, Drawings, vol. 1, London, 1948, no. 75, illustrated

This painting has most likely never been restored and it has certainly not been cleaned. It appears that originally Nicholson painted first on the other side of the canvas; some remnants or a scrapped down painting is visible on the reverse. He seems to have abandoned this picture, turned the painting over and painted the picture that is visible today. The paint layer does not seem to have ever been cleaned. The canvas is quite knotty and the successive scraping, sanding and application of paint has revealed some of these exaggerated grains in the canvas, all of which are original. The paint layer is quite dirty and will presumably clean successfully. It is very thick which is compounded by the fact that the reverse is also painted and some cracking has developed, particularly in the center and right sides. Nonetheless, the paint layer is stable. Running from top to bottom in the middle of the canvas a very slight stretcher mark has developed which is visible in raking light. Ideally this is a picture which would not be lined, despite the cracking and the stretcher marks. The cleaning should be very carefully carried out and no varnish should be applied. This condition report has been kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation.
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During the early 1930s, Nicholson's work became increasingly abstract as the figures, objects and landscapes that had occupied him in the 20s made way for constructivist explorations of form and color. This incredibly important decade for the artist gave rise to some of the most challenging and lyrical works of his career. Although initially resistant to the implications of abstraction, Nicholson eventually surrendered his attachment to realistic interpretation and embraced a purity of shape and color. A visit to Mondrian's studio in the early 30s fortified his sense of direction when he witnessed the plasticity of the artist's De Stijl works (see fig. 1). As Norbert Lynton explains, "Acquaintance with Mondrian's work, backed by his visit to the Dutchman's studio, must have removed any doubts in him, that art could be abstract and significant and also employ a deliberately limited vocabulary of forms and colours" (Robert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, London, 1993, p. 112).

Painted in 1938, the current work is a rare and magnificent example from the latter part of this period. While mostly occupied with his series of white reliefs during the late 30s, Nicholson here employs an expanded though muted color palette that conveys a haunting unity not dissimilar to the reliefs. The work portrays a purity of form that was rarely matched by his contemporaries. In Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, which he published with Naum Gabo and J. L. Martin in 1937, Nicholson celebrated painting and abstraction. He wrote, "It must be understood that a good idea is exactly as good as it can be universally applied, that no idea can have a universal application which is not solved in its own terms and if any extraneous elements are introduced the application ceases to be universal. 'Realism' has been abandoned in the search for reality: the 'principal objective' of abstract art is precisely that reality... A different painting, a different sculpture are different experiences just as walking in a field or over a mountain are different experiences and it is only at the point at which a painting becomes an actual experience in the artist's life, more or less profound and more or less capable of universal application according to the artist's capacity to live, that it is capable of becoming a part, also, of the lives of other people and that it can take its place in the structure of the world, in everyday life" (quoted in ibid, pp. 141-42).

Although this work had at some point been titled Red Circle, Richard Ziesler met the artist  after having recently acquired the work and Nicholson informed him that this was not the proper title. The work remained in Ziesler's collection for almost 50 years until it was gifted to the National Gallery of Art.

Figure 1 Piet Mondrian, Composition No. 1, with Red and Black, 1929, oil on canvas, Kunstmuseum, Basel