Tréboul, Britanny

This work was executed on Nicholson's first trip to Brittany in April 1949. Nicholson was captivated by the landscape, the architecture and the people of Brittany and visited many areas including the ports of Tréboul and Douarnenez, neolithic sites such as Locmariaquer, Carnac town and Morbihan. This work highlights Nicholson's visit to the fishing port of Tréboul, which twenty years earlier had inspired his close friend Christopher Wood. Very few drawings survive from this first visit and the present work would have been executed en plein air. Nicholson worked in pencil and did not usually paint outdoors at this time,' Difficult job ptg out of doors - such an immense amount to sift - I prefer to sift when I can in a dwg & then go ahead in the studio using the dwg for structure and feeling.' (see Exhib. cat. Tate Gallery, Ben Nicholson, Cambridgeshire, 13 October 1993 - 9 January 1994, p.86). Although, at this stage of his life, Nicholson did not make studies for specific paintings, this statement suggests that the relationship of the two activities is closer than might have been thought. It has always been surmised that Nicholson's experience of landscape, obtained through looking and drawing on such trips as his excursion to Brittany, were subsequently translated into his still lifes of the 1950s. Nicholson supports this stating, ' I saw some lovely things in Brittany - most lovely. Someday I suppose they'll come out indirectly - in the work (letter dated 12 June 1949, see ibid. p.91.).'