Ben Nicholson, O.M.

Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, where acquired by Dorothy Elmhirst, October 1931 for £20.0.0
Gifted by Dorothy Elmhirst to The Dartington Hall Trust, 25th March 1965

London, Arthur Tooth & Sons, Recent Developments in British Painting, 1st - 17th October 1931, cat. no.12;
Dartington Hall, High Cross House, c1995 - 2010.

Original canvas. There is a small area of faint craquelure about the white paint near the left hand edge, only visible upon close inspection. There are very faint stretcher bar marks along the centre of the left and right edge. Otherwise the work appears in excellent original condition, with strong passages of surface texture, notably to the white and red pigments. Under ultraviolet light there appear to be no signs of retouching. Held in Nicholson's original carved wood frame under glass; unexamined out of frame. Please contact the department on 0207 293 6424 if you have any questions about the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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'He has discovered for himself and for us a young English painter who is the real thing. His name is Ben Nicholson and his pictures are on view at Arthur Tooth - In a moment of weakness I bought two - ...you will like them - and they are very cheap...'
(Dorothy Elmhirst, letter to Leonard Elmhirst, 16th October 1931)

1930/1 (Charbon) marks a highly important pivotal point in the development of the artist's style. The confident yet stylized line which simplifies the still life objects to their most pared down form undoubtedly represents a climax of Nicholson's early style consolidating the influences and lessons he had amassed throughout the previous decade. During the 1920s he had become particularly good friends with Christopher Wood, whom he had first met in 1926, and together with his first wife Winifred they formed an impressive triumvirate dedicated to the pursuit of a modernist life and style. The three artists worked and corresponded closely during the latter years of the 1920s and Winifred explained that 'inspiration ran high and flew backwards and forwards from one to the other (Winifred Nicholson, Kit, unpublished memoir, Tate Gallery Archive 723.100, p.18).

The interlocking shapes, flattened perspective and use of French wording in 1930/1 (Charbon) clearly allude to cubist influences and more specifically to Picasso and Braque's Synthetic Cubism developed in the first decades of the 20^th Century. Having married in 1920, Ben and Winifred travelled extensively in Europe during the early 1920s and intermediate visits to Paris during the vital years of the Kahnweiler sales in 1921 and 1923 were crucial in making the artistic trends of pre-war Paris known to them. Wood introduced even closer links to Continental modernist movements; he had lived in Paris in the early 1920s, met Picasso in 1923, Jean Cocteau in 1924 and mixed with the heady Parisian beau-monde centred around Diaghilev's Ballet Russes. Opium became a necessary part of his experience and a hint of the unworldly is clear in his seminal masterpiece from 1930, Le Phare (fig.1, 1930, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge), where playing cards and a French newspaper lie abandoned in front of a Wallis-like landscape. In 1930/1 (Charbon), playing cards are positioned even more prominently, a nod to Wood but also suggestive of chance, luck, and the wider significance of the game of life which was to bring far reaching changes for Nicholson in the 1930s:

In 1930, Nicholson and Wood celebrated the end of the decade with their first joint exhibition in Paris with Bernheim Jeune, the prestigious dealers who represented art world luminaries such as Matisse and Modigliani. By 1931, the year the present work was completed, Wood had died tragically at the age of 29, Ben had begun a relationship with Barbara Hepworth and was soon to embrace a new direction in his art that led to his first entirely abstract monochrome reliefs in 1933. 

The distinctive surface is also significant. 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. Winifred highlighted that it was Wood who introduced her and Ben to this technique of 'painting on coverine...it dries fast, you can put it over old pics' (Winifred Nicholson, ibid., p.24). 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.

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