'This work is a sketch for the mural on the south wall of the upper hall in Queen Mary's Dolls House. The Dolls House was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1920; it is a replica of a well-to-do house of the period, complete with electricity and fully-functioning plumbing, and was completed in 1924. Conceived by Lutyens and others as an affectionate tribute from the British people to Queen Mary, some 1500 artists, craftsmen and donors were involved. Nicholson's mural shows the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden watched, as Nicholson put it, 'by all their pets', the entire animal kingdom. It is an unusual choice of subject, both for the artist and for the location. Like so many others Nicholson had suffered great personal loss during the First World War and the subject perhaps reflected his feeling that the world he had known and so greatly enjoyed, in houses such as this before the war would never be again. In the finished version the branches of the tree are formalised, creating perches for scores of birds, and they extend past the cornice and into the coffered vault of the ceiling. The artist has relocated the Angel Gabriel here above the cornice and the diagonal lines of the fire scorching from his fingers onto the fingers of Adam and Eve help to give an added impression of height. The mural is continued onto the shorter east and west walls. The Dolls House is on permanent display to the public at Windsor Castle'

We are very grateful to Patricia Reed for her help in cataloguing this lot