Ben Nicholson, O.M.

Clifton Faldman Collection, California
Private Collection, U.S.A.
Jonathan Clark & Co., London, whence purchased by the present owner

Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, Contemporary British Art, 26 May - 23 June 1957;
Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art, Contemporary British Art (from the Silverman Galleries), 9 July - 21 August 1957, no.19;
London, Waddington Galleries, Twentieth Century Works, 3-27 February 1988, no.10, illustrated in the catalogue.

The canvas is in good overall condition. The paint surface is in good overall condition. There is no sign of retouching under ultra-violet light. Held under glass in a painted wooden frame and presented against a white painted backboard. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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'I have favourite places - Mycenae and Pisa, and Siena, for instance - and I feel that in a previous life I must have laid two or three of the stones in Siena Cathedral...' (Nicholson, Sunday Times, April 28 1963)

Nicholson made his first post-war visit to Italy in 1950 and begun an ongoing series of works referencing visits to Tuscany, Lazio and Umbria. Although he was clearly inspired by the monumental Italian architecture and the surrounding landscape, it is significant in light of his avant-garde achievements that one of his favourite subjects remained the traditional genre subject of the still life. May 1955 (siena) focuses directly on the table top objects themselves; the goblet, carafe and bowl each delineated in Nicholson's trademark style and framed in the distance by the elegant silhouette of the Tuscan Hills.

Nicholson had been interested in the still life from an early stage in his career and later recalled that 'of course I owe a lot to my father – especially to his poetic idea and to his still life theme. That didn't come from Cubism...but from my father' (Nicholson quoted in The Sunday Times, 28 April 1963). Sir William Nicholson's exemplary handling of objects in works such as White Orchids on Books (lot 19) must have been a clear influence, however, the present arrangement of the still life in front of a landscape was also one of his wife Winifred's favourite compositions. Although it was painted in 1955, the present work is highly reminiscent of Nicholson's style that he developed in the 1920s when he had first married Winifred and when they travelled together in Europe and experienced the French avant-garde at first hand. The interlocking shapes and stylised lines of the central still life in May 1955 (siena) clearly allude to cubist influences and more specifically to Picasso and Braque's Synthetic Cubism that they developed together in the first decade of the 20^th Century.

The distinctive surface of May 1955 (siena) is also important. The underlying ground is clearly visible beneath the multi-layered paint surface and as such, draws attention to the physical nature of the canvas itself, a material that had been in short supply during the war years and which had only become readily available again in the early 1950s. Winifred highlights that it was Christopher Wood who introduced her and Ben to this technique of 'painting on coverine...it dries fast, you can put it over old pics' (W. Nicholson, Kit, unpublished memoir, Tate Gallery Archive 723.100, p.25). It created a firm painting ground which was visible beneath the painted image.  In the present work, the textured paint surface takes on an additional three dimensional quality as the bold pencil drawing literally incises the surface, almost punctuating the canvas itself.

The year in which May 1955 (siena) was executed was also particularly significant for the artist as it marked his first high profile retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London.