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Ensayo del lote
Painted in 1915, when William Nicholson was working from his studio at The Pheasantry on the King’s Road, Chelsea, Watches and Freesias is a still life of considerable personal significance. A vase with a blue rim and maroon festoons occupies the centre of the composition, with a handful of white freesias leaning over its edge, and a gold pocket watch lies face upwards on either side of its base. The group is set before a black mirror, likely the one that stood in the Pheasantry studio, which repeats each object in reflection, lending the composition a subtle doubling. Nicholson’s handling is finely judged throughout: the freesias are rendered in soft, delicate touches of white; the watches with a precision that captures the iridescent sheen of their gold; and the vase so sensitively that its worn glaze and slightly softened decoration convey both its age and its long service as a cherished object.
The pocket watch to the right is a Breguet belonging to Edie Stuart Wortley, given to her by her father. By 1915 Edie was a close friend of the Nicholson family, particularly of Nicholson’s wife, the painter Mabel Pryde, and in 1919 – following the deaths of Mabel and of Edie’s husband, Jack Stuart Wortley – she became Nicholson’s second wife. The Breguet held an enduring fascination for Nicholson, recurring in illustrated sketches in his letters and in later paintings, notably Miss Simpson’s Boots (1919), sold in these Rooms on 22 March 2022 for a world record price of £1,782,000. The watch on the left, a French gold watch, was Nicholson's own. When the artist set these two watches side by side in 1915, one was his own and the other belonged to a friend of the family. It is notable, therefore, that when the picture was first exhibited, at the Walker Art Gallery in 1921, under the title The Watches, it brought together the possessions of a husband and wife, lending the pairing a resonance which only the passage of time could supply.
The vase was likewise a recurring element of Nicholson’s studio repertoire, and in a sketch for the present picture he describes it as ‘Italian’ (P. Reed, William Nicholson: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, London, 2011, p. 290). The objects assembled here were evidently highly familiar to the artist, and they appear to have been selected for their associations as much as for their formal qualities. In this respect, the present work invites comparison with Jean-Siméon Chardin’s Still Life of Pipes and a Drinking Glass, widely known as La Tabagie, in which an open smoker’s box, clay pipes and drinking vessels suggest the habits and private leisure of an unseen owner through possessions alone. Nicholson’s arrangement shares such an economy of means, though the objects he has chosen carry specific and documented histories of their own.
Cut and already beginning to droop, the freesias – placed between two instruments for measuring time – lend the composition a quiet sense of transience. Both watches were subsequently stolen, Nicholson’s from his studio in 1939 and Edie’s in 1948, so that the painting now beautifully preserves the memory of objects that, with a certain irony, have themselves been lost to time.
The pocket watch to the right is a Breguet belonging to Edie Stuart Wortley, given to her by her father. By 1915 Edie was a close friend of the Nicholson family, particularly of Nicholson’s wife, the painter Mabel Pryde, and in 1919 – following the deaths of Mabel and of Edie’s husband, Jack Stuart Wortley – she became Nicholson’s second wife. The Breguet held an enduring fascination for Nicholson, recurring in illustrated sketches in his letters and in later paintings, notably Miss Simpson’s Boots (1919), sold in these Rooms on 22 March 2022 for a world record price of £1,782,000. The watch on the left, a French gold watch, was Nicholson's own. When the artist set these two watches side by side in 1915, one was his own and the other belonged to a friend of the family. It is notable, therefore, that when the picture was first exhibited, at the Walker Art Gallery in 1921, under the title The Watches, it brought together the possessions of a husband and wife, lending the pairing a resonance which only the passage of time could supply.
The vase was likewise a recurring element of Nicholson’s studio repertoire, and in a sketch for the present picture he describes it as ‘Italian’ (P. Reed, William Nicholson: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, London, 2011, p. 290). The objects assembled here were evidently highly familiar to the artist, and they appear to have been selected for their associations as much as for their formal qualities. In this respect, the present work invites comparison with Jean-Siméon Chardin’s Still Life of Pipes and a Drinking Glass, widely known as La Tabagie, in which an open smoker’s box, clay pipes and drinking vessels suggest the habits and private leisure of an unseen owner through possessions alone. Nicholson’s arrangement shares such an economy of means, though the objects he has chosen carry specific and documented histories of their own.
Cut and already beginning to droop, the freesias – placed between two instruments for measuring time – lend the composition a quiet sense of transience. Both watches were subsequently stolen, Nicholson’s from his studio in 1939 and Edie’s in 1948, so that the painting now beautifully preserves the memory of objects that, with a certain irony, have themselves been lost to time.