Tobacco Plant

The dating of this work is uncertain. In a review of the Leicester Galleries exhibition The Times correspondent (1 April 1943) described it as an earlier work because of the 'almost black background'. However, the treatment of the glass vase and the signature suggests the late 1930s. Nicholson had been famous for the rich, dark backgrounds of his still lifes before and during the First World War but had abandoned them in 1920. These black backgrounds were either textiles or black mirrors, whereas here the background is a black-painted wall. There was a brief vogue for black painted rooms in the years prior to the Second World War. In 1937 Edie, Nicholson's wife from whom he was separated, had painted her sitting room in Ealing black and filled it with red furnishings. Here the setting of the white scented flowers against the black background is a new departure, one that, as far as is known, had not been attempted by Nicholson in his earlier works.