Still Life 1945 is characteristic of "Nicholson's still life style as it developed in the mid-1940s with his flagging interest in pure nonobjectivity and reviving interest in the world of things. The mood of his work changed markedly, and just as his landscapes from the early forties show a switch away from the analytic intensity of the abstractions toward the sensuous pleasures of gay color, rich texture, and elegant linear movement. The grounds of these works are built up with several thin layers of paint that are scraped or rubbed in areas, producing a nuanced color-space that dissolves away the picture plane. Nicholson's willowy line glides through this space...but now traces the silhouettes or fragments of tabletop and still life objects. Interspersed planes, some of them solidly colored, others transparent or lightly shaded, create a sense of shifting, ambiguous spatial relations. These paintings would be impossible without the prior discoveries of Cubism, and perhaps of all the Cubist painters, Juan Gris offers in his work the closest comparisons; Nicholson transformed the Cubist vocabulary, however, into a personal mode of expression more abstract, airy, and lyrical." (S. Nash, Ben Nicholson, Fifty Years of his Art, Buffalo, New York, 1978, p. 83).