Ben Nicholson, O.M.

Acquired by the present owner’s grandparents Robert Mayor and Katherine Beatrice Mayor in the early 1930s

The following condition report has been prepared by Stuart Sanderson. The painting is in very good condition. On close examination the surface seems to have on a light layer of surface dust. There are some minor areas of shrinkage cracks. The painting is unvarnished, so there is the sort of variation in the surface that you would expect in a painting of this age. The technique of the background is a layer of white body colour over a putty coloured ground, then with a thin wash of grey in some areas. This has been scraped through to achieve the desired effect. I do not think there is a substantial clean, but a subtle improvement will occur when the dust layer is removed. The canvas is slightly slack and would need tensioning. When I looked at the painting under ultra-violet light, nothing showed at all. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions with regards to the present work. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding 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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

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

Flowers was most likely painted in 1928, a particularly significant year for Nicholson in terms of his artistic development. In March, Christopher Wood had come to stay at Bankshead, Ben and Winifred’s home in Cumberland when ‘inspiration ran high and flew backwards and forwards from one to the other’ (Andrew Nicholson (ed.), ‘Blue was his Colour’, Unknown Colour; Paintings, Letters, Writings by Winifred Nicholson, Faber and Faber, London, 1987, p.86). That summer, the Nicholsons and Wood spent two and a half months together in Cornwall and it was in August 1928 that Nicholson and Wood famously ‘discovered’ Alfred Wallis on their visit to St Ives. Flowers is a powerful visual manifestation of the intimate relationship fostered between all three artists during this intense period of creativity when their working process was at its closest. Winifred later recalled to Frosca Munster that ‘Ben and Kit had made friends with a friendship and fellowship in their work which brought the very best of them to flowering point – it was great fun to see – the zest and vitality and life in it meant everything to us all...’ (Winifred, letter to Frosca Munster, circa 1930, quoted in Richard Ingleby, Christopher Wood, Allison & Busby, London 1995, p.184). 

The pared down form, domestic subject and simple yet stylized handling of Flowers reflects a wider tendency, conscious or unconscious, throughout post-war Europe of a so-called rappel à l'ordre - the rejection of the machine age and any associated visual language such as Futurism and Vorticism developed during the years leading up to the First World War. It is within this context that Nicholson and Wood's discovery of Alfred Wallis's instinctive and untutored draughtsmanship struck a particularly resonant chord. The two artists were instantly fascintated by the old mariner's paintings of 'ships and houses on odd pieces of paper and cardboard nailed up all over the wall' which had a raw immediacy that appealed directly to their modernist sensibilities (Nicholson, Horizon, Vol.VII, no.37, 1943). 

The flattened perspective of the overall composition also demonstrates Nicholson's knowledge and understanding of the pre-war avant-garde and most specifically of Picasso and Braque's synthetic cubism. 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. Nicholson's freize-like inclusion of clubs, diamonds and hearts are surely a nod to Wood's bohemian spirit and they are prophetic of the playing cards that were to take centre stage in Wood's seminal work Le Phare (1930, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge).  

The distinctive surface of Flowers 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 highlights that it was Wood who introduced her and Ben to his technique of ‘painting on coverine.. it dries fast, you can put it over old pics’ (Winifred, Kit, op.cit., p.93). It created a firm painting ground which was visible beneath the painted image. In Flowers the textured paint surface takes on an additional three dimensional quality as the pencil drawing literally incises the surface enlivening the tension between canvas and paint. 

Originally this work was in the collection of Robert ('Robin') and Beatrice ('Bobo') Mayor, both writers with connections to the Bloomsbury Group. Bobo was born into the Meinertzhagen banking family. Her aunt was Beatrice Webb, co-founder of the LSE, and her brother was the famously eccentric spy, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen. Robin studied Classics at Cambridge, becoming a fellow of King's College and a member of the Apostles, a society which Maynard Keynes and others in the Bloomsbury Group would join a few years later.