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Lot Essay
Peter Khoroche comments, 'Familiarity with the landscape around Siena, though possibly a bonus, is not a requirement for becoming involved with the monumental 1970 Sienese Landscape. The eye is soon travelling back and forth between the two unequal quadrilaterals, lingering perhaps to wonder how it is that the lower, brown one seems to lead off into the distance; then it escapes up to the whitey-grey window of light before curiosity drives it back to inspect the loosely brushed paintmarks, bottom right, which contrast so shockingly with the superbly sweeping, shallow arcs, taut as the lines of a Nicholson drawing, that hold the work in dynamic suspension.
So much for what the eye may be doing, while incidentally registering the many subtle shifts of tone within the narrow colour range, the abrasions, the pockmarks and the strong contrast between the carved area and the backboard. While all this is happening you either are or are not making connexions between what you are seeing and what you have seen and experienced in the past. It may have nothing to do with Siena, or even with landscape. It may only be a feeling, a mood, a state of being. But the combined visual and affective experience can be powerful and enduring - as right for the viewer as it must have been for Nicholson the maker - quietening the mind, energizing the spirit'. (see P. Khoroche, loc. cit., pp. 38-39).
So much for what the eye may be doing, while incidentally registering the many subtle shifts of tone within the narrow colour range, the abrasions, the pockmarks and the strong contrast between the carved area and the backboard. While all this is happening you either are or are not making connexions between what you are seeing and what you have seen and experienced in the past. It may have nothing to do with Siena, or even with landscape. It may only be a feeling, a mood, a state of being. But the combined visual and affective experience can be powerful and enduring - as right for the viewer as it must have been for Nicholson the maker - quietening the mind, energizing the spirit'. (see P. Khoroche, loc. cit., pp. 38-39).