Winifred Nicholson

Gifted by Dorothy Elmhirst to The Dartington Hall Trust, 25th March 1965

London, Leicester Galleries, 10th Exhibition The Seven & Five Society, January 1931, cat. no.43;
Dartington Hall, High Cross House, 2001 - 2010.

Original canvas. A landscape study appears on the reverse. There are a few minor areas of craquelure in places across the canvas, including near the upper left corner, the centre of the upper edge and to the right of the flower pot above the chair, all of which are only visible upon close inspection. There is a spot of old frame abrasion by the upper right edge. Otherwise the work appears in good overall condition with strong areas of impasto. Under ultraviolet light there appear to be no signs of retouching. Held under glass in a simple wooden frame; unexamined out of frame. Please telephone the department on 0207 293 6424 if you have any questions about the present work.
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'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').

Winifred Nicholson drew on the theme of flowers throughout her career, having become entranced by the subject in the early 1920s while living with her husband Ben Nicholson in Switzerland. Winifred particularly focused on the subject matter of flowers during her time spent at Villa Capricco in Lugano and in the rural countryside of Cumberland and Ragged Robin is a quintessential example of this type. 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.

There is a landscape painted on the reverse of the present work.

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