WINIFRED NICHOLSON | PENPILLICK

Acquired by the family of the previous owner prior to February 1933

Their sale, Christie's London, 12th November 2009, lot 64, where acquired by the present owner

London, Leicester Galleries, 12th Exhibition of the 7 & 5 Society, February 1933, cat. no.55A;

Edinburgh, Scottish Arts Council Gallery, Winifred Nicholson Paintings 1900-1978, September 1979, cat. no.24, with tour to Carlisle Art Gallery, Carlisle; Third Eye Centre, Glasgow; Hatton Gallery, Newcastle; The Minories Gallery, Colchester and St Ives Galleries, Penwith.

We are grateful to Jovan Nicholson for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.

'She obtains a freshness in her painting, and for colour, I know of no one who interprets so truthfully the pure clarity of flowers themselves.' (H.S. Ede discussing Winfred Nicholson's work, 1928).

Winifred Nicholson drew on the theme of flowers throughout her career. As she stated: 'I like painting flowers - I have tried to paint many things in many different ways, but my paintbrush always gives a tremor of pleasure when I let it paint a flower-and I think that I know why this is so' (Winifred Nicholson, 1969, quoted in Andrew Nicholson (ed.), Unknown Colour: Paintings, Letters, Writings, by Winifred Nicholson, Faber and Faber, London, 1987, as 'The Flower's Response'). These paintings mark a distinctive period in Winifred's career prior to her divorce and to her time spent in Paris, where the focus of her work becomes briefly more abstracted. The present work was painted in 1932, following a move down to Cornwall in the Spring and just prior to her departure to Paris that Autumn and was exhibited with the 7&5 Society in 1933, alongside Yellow Flags and a Moth, 1932. Formed initially as a response to the Bloomsbury focused London Group, by the 1920s the 7&5 Society become one of the most important exhibition spaces in London. The Society had a modernist focus following Ben Nicholson’s inclusion in 1924, and counted Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and John Piper amongst its members and exhibitors. Winifred was elected as a member of the Society in 1925 and exhibited with them until they ceased to be active in 1935.