Ben Nicholson, O.M.

Gifted by the Artist to Winifred Nicholson, by whom gifted to Hamish Nicholson in 1965
Gifted by the above to the present owner in 2002

London, Tate, Ben Nicholson, 19th June - 27th July 1969, cat. no.1.

There are isolated areas of craquelure to all four quadrants, visible upon close inspection. This excepting the work appears in very good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals a few scattered spots of fluorescence in the upper right hand quadrant, with one further tiny fleck along the top left quadrant along the upper edge. Housed behind glass in a thick dark wooden frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Circa 1921 (Brown House, Lugano) belongs to a rare group of formative early work executed in Switzerland during the first few years of the 1920s. The pictures are important in marking a major departure from the more rigorous academic handling of Nicholson's work from the previous decade such as 1919 (Blue Bowl in Shadow) (Private Collection) which were largely informed by his father, Sir William Nicholson's, sophisticated Edwardian example. Having married in 1920, Ben and Winifred spent their honeymoon travelling through Europe to Venice, Florence, Rome, Pisa, Naples, Lugano, Portofino and Genoa. They bought the Villa Capriccio in Castagnola overlooking Lake Lugano and spent the next couple of winters there, travelling frequently through Paris en route. Their extensive European travels during these years were crucial in bringing them up to date with avant-garde developments in Paris as well as giving them first hand experience of the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, as John Summerson has pointed out, Ben's scrap book from 1922 clearly demonstrates his allegiances at the time: Giotto, Uccello, Cézanne, the Douanier, Matisse, Derain, Braque, Picasso (John Summerson, Ben Nicholson, Penguin Books, West Drayton, 1948, p.7).

The cool winter palette of the present work certainly alludes to the muted tones of the so-called Italian Primitives such as Uccello and Piera della Francesca but also demonstrates Winifred's influence, exemplified in work such as Window-Sill, Lugano (1923, Tate Collection, London). The simplification of the surrounding landscape to its most pared down form signals Ben's absorption of all he had seen in Paris - the underlying geometry of the composition evident through the simple forms of the brown house and the reduction of the surrounding fields to their bare outlines demonstrates the lessons of Cézanne whilst his treatment of the architecture, most notably the group of houses in the centre of the background, expertly portrayed with a few deft strokes, show Nicholson's knowledge and understanding of Picasso and Braque's cubism. 

Driven on by his new experiences, Nicholson's output during the early 1920s was prolific, however, he destroyed or painted over most of his work from this period. It is a testament to the regard in which he held the present work that it survived and thus it stands as an important symbol of his early progression when the foundations were laid for exciting developments to follow over the next few decades. 

We are grateful to Lee Beard for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of this work.