Winifred Nicholson

Miss Gillet
Lady Mantagu Pollock
Jonathan Clark & Co., London, where purchased by the previous owners, 28th April 1999, and thence by descent 

London, Leicester Galleries, Paintings by Winifred Nicholson, March - April 1930, cat. no.7;
Cambridge, Kettle's Yard Gallery, Winifred Nicholson, 28th July - 22nd September 2001, cat. no.C, illustrated on the front cover, with tour to Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, and Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle;
London, Crane Kalman Gallery, Exhibition of Paintings, 2009 (details untraced).

Christopher Andreae, Winifred Nicholson, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2009, fig. no.59, illustrated p.71.

Original canvas. The canvas appears sound. There are some very minor scuffs to the extreme edges of the work with further areas of very minor craquelure in the more impasto areas of paint, most apparent in the flowers and towards the lower right corner. Subject to the above, the work appears in good overall condition, with fresh and vibrant colours throughout. Ultraviolet light reveals some extremely minor flecks of retouching to the edges. There is a fine diagonal line of retouching in the upper left quadrant most probably to an old scratch. The work is housed in an ornate carved wooden frame, under glass. 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 Jovan Nicholson for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.

‘I like painting flowers – I have tried to paint many things in many different ways, but my paint brush always gives a tremor of pleasure when I let it paint a flower – and I think I know why’ (Winifred Nicholson quoted in Andrew Nicholson, ed., Unknown Colour, Paintings, Letters, Writings, by Winifred Nicholson, Faber and Faber, 1987, p.216).

The table top pictures which Winifred Nicholson painted in the late 1920’s are among her most assured and exuberant paintings. Typically if Winifred liked a grouping of flowers and pots she would paint a number of different combinations and this is true of the table top pictures. The current lot, Flower Table: Pots, 1927 (Private Collection), Flower Table No 4 (Private Collection) and Flower Table (Tate, London) all depict almost identical flowers in various different lights and arrangements sitting on the same simple white table or sideboard. The latter two include a hookie rug and stone flag floor, suggesting that these pictures were all painted at about the same time at the Nicholson’s home Bankshead in Cumberland, and in the room that Winifred later hung her Mondrian (see lot 11, Fig.1).

The art critic P.G. Konody, reviewing Winifred Nicholson’s exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1930 where the current lot was exhibited, wrote ‘Elegance of arabesque and loveliness of colour and surface quality help towards making her pictures the gems of wall decoration which they undoubtedly are. She is not content with the two-dimensional disposition of her material, and is invariably bent upon the conquest of the third dimension, although her indication of special relations is too subtle to become immediately obvious to the spectator. The refinement of her colour harmonies baffles description’ (P.G. Konody, ‘Berthe Morisot and Winifred Nicholson’, Observer, 30^th March 1930).

Jim Ede, Winifred Nicholson’s close friend and the founder of Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, wrote about the time the current lot was painted with typical sensitivity and understanding: ‘She paints a pot of flowers and in it you feel the laws of universal birth – it isn’t just these flowers growing – it is the whole life of nature … 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. There is about it all an ease and simplicity, an apparent effortlessness, inevitable as the moving of clouds in a blue sky; and this is because her work is a thing felt before it is seen’ (Jim Ede quoted in, Jovan Nicholson (ed.), Art and Life, Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, William Staite Murray, 1920-1931, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2013, p.83).

Mima (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) and The Djanogly Art Centre, The University of Nottingham, are planning an exhibition of Winifred Nicholson’s work in the autumn of 2016. It is hoped that the purchaser will agree to lend this picture to the exhibition.

Jovan Nicholson