Goats in a landscape, recto; Spring landscape, verso

The poet, Kathleen Raine (see A. Nicholson, Ed., Unknown Colour Paintings Letters and Writings by Winifred Nicholson, London, 1987, p. 197) records that although Winifred Nicholson tended to avoid the anatomy of animals and birds in her painting, she did love to surround herself with 'young people about her to help with the running of the household who were doing 'interesting things' - spinning and weaving, or pottery, or keeping goats, or working to become painters'. Thus goats in the landscape around her Cumbrian home at Banks Head would have been a familar sight and are the subject of a number of her paintings, such as Goats can see Nymphs, from circa 1965 (private collection).