"Nicholson executed his first reliefs in December of 1933 and by March of 1934 had begun to paint the reliefs all-white, a logical next step in the process of purification and simplification which his work underwent in these years. White expanded the scale of the reliefs beyond their physical limits and made light an essential, active ingredient. And while Nicholson did not know of Gabo's Realistic Manifesto at the time and was not particularly concerned with theorization, his use of white as part of a statement of purity and clarity shows an affinity to certain of Gabo's ideas: '...in painting we renounce colour as a pictorial element, colour is the idealized optimcal surface of objects; an exterior and superficial impression of them; colour is accidental and it has nothing in common with the innermost essence of a thing.' The earliest white reliefs were generally quite small and [as in the present work] preserved the irregularities of the earlier reliefs." (Exhibition Catalogue, S. Nash, Ben Nicholson, Fifty Years of his Art, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, 1978, p. 68.)