Lot 120
  • 120

Winifred Nicholson

Estimate
15,000 - 25,000 GBP
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Description

  • Winifred Nicholson
  • Japanese Anemones and Prism
  • signed, dated 1949, and inscribed with the Artist's address on the reverse
  • oil and pencil on board
  • 52 by 59cm.; 20½ by 23¼in.

Provenance

Redfern Gallery, London, where acquired by Lord & Lady Attenborough, 4th June 1985

Exhibited

Bradford, 1949 (details untraced);
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, The Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Paintings, 19th October - 21st December 1950, cat. no.214, illustrated pl.106.

Condition

Not viewed out of the frame. The panel appears sound. There are some fine, horizontal lines of craquelure apparent in places to the work, most noticeable to the right vertical edge. There is some light surface dirt in places. Subject to the above, the work appears to be in very good overall condition.Ultraviolet light reveals some flecks of fluorescence which suggest retouching in the lower left corner. There are some further scattered flecks of fluorescence, most apparent in the upper and lower left quadrants. The work is presented in a painted wooden frame, held under glass.Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Catalogue Note

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

Throughout her life Winifred Nicholson was fascinated by prisms for the way in which they revealed how form is related to colour. Japanese Anemones and Prism (1949) prefigures the extraordinary spell of ‘prismatic’ paintings that Winifred painted in the very last years of her life and shares many characteristics with them, notably the rim of fiery orange along the leaves of the anemones and the side of the jug, and the large arc of rainbow colours where the yellow and orange, by looking through the prism, have been separated from the more subtle tones of violet and indigo (see Winifred Nicholson: Liberation of Colour, by Jovan Nicholson, I.B. Tauris, London, 2016, for a discussion of the ‘prismatic’ paintings).

Jovan Nicholson