During the 1930s Nicholson's work could be divided into two distinct stlyes, namely, his white reliefs and the rectangular colour zone paintings. Painted in 1939 this work shows the influence of the modernist artist Piet Mondrian whom Nicholson befriended in Paris, and who joined his circle of friends in London in 1938.
Adrian Stokes referred to these paintings in terms of: "the inter-relationship of pure colour zones in which there are no gradations or alterations of texture." (J. Russel, Ben Nicholson: drawings, paintings and sculptures 1911-1968, London, 1969, p. 29). John Russel elaborated: "In them we see for the first time the gamut of pure, clean sharp..colour, which has hence forward to be one of the great attractions of Ben Nicholson's painting." (Ibid.)