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Lot Essay
Ben Nicholson and his family had been visiting Cornwall on the outbreak of the Second World War in August 1939 and they chose to stay on with their host, Adrian Stokes, instead of returning to London. Eventually in 1942 the family settled in a large house at the end of Carbis Bay with studio space so that Nicholson and Hepworth could resume working. Ben would live in Cornwall for another twenty years.
Feb 21 1947 (painting) is a vibrant still life created at Chy-an-Kerris, the family home, and this address is written in his hand on the back of the panel. At this time, he worked on paintings that reflected the view that he saw from his studio window. The composition is a rhymical arrangement of geometric shapes, rendered in soft grey and brown and carved into a layered surface by the artist, then edged with triangles of black, white, mustard, and magenta, and rectangles of deeper brown and bright tones of blue. Gradually, out of Nicholson’s abstraction, the rectangles begin to suggest a windowpane, and the circles become studio objects, while a tabletop can be made out from the woody tones and straight pencil lines. The grainy, scumbled surface suggests the texture of the rocks and stone walls in the landscape, the deep browns become trees or boats, and the vivid blues evoke the sea and the sky beyond. In this way, the whole composition represents the view out of the room and beyond an open window.
Nicholson described this inspirational view and the new living arrangements at Chy-an-Kerris in a letter to his friend, the curator and collector, Jim Ede, `It faces due N. - looking out to the Atlantic horizon with St Ives, like Greece, coming out into the bay on one side & Godrevy lighthouse & its rocks and N. Cornwall on the other - the sea as I write is blue beyond belief & small white yachts & an occasional brown fishing boat are here & there radiating from St Ives, a mysterious cloud bank on the horizon fades in a haze into a pale blue sky - but I like even better the due S. view which is as close & personal & warm as the N. one is cold and remote - there my bedroom I thought at first was a rather terrible Victorian pagoda but it turns out whitewashed, to an exceptionally lovely little DUCCIO or Fra Angelico cell with two fragile white pillars & strange & rather lovely shaped ceiling & casement windows with the hot sun which comes in all day & changes to bright moonlight at night. I see a lovely old Cornish roof with a palm tree & pines & nice pale coloured & flowering shrubs & next door but one a snow-white walled garden with bright green leaves & red flowers & black cats in it & rather like Paris suburb or the S. of France in feeling. Barbara for the first time since the war has a room for a studio & has been able to get her blocks of stone & wood, & her large sculptures out - the room is absurd because it really might be 7 Mall Studios only with the blue sea outside' (Ben Nicholson, letter to H.S. Ede, 29 August 1942, Kettle's Yard Archive, University of Cambridge).
Feb 21 1947 (painting) is a vibrant still life created at Chy-an-Kerris, the family home, and this address is written in his hand on the back of the panel. At this time, he worked on paintings that reflected the view that he saw from his studio window. The composition is a rhymical arrangement of geometric shapes, rendered in soft grey and brown and carved into a layered surface by the artist, then edged with triangles of black, white, mustard, and magenta, and rectangles of deeper brown and bright tones of blue. Gradually, out of Nicholson’s abstraction, the rectangles begin to suggest a windowpane, and the circles become studio objects, while a tabletop can be made out from the woody tones and straight pencil lines. The grainy, scumbled surface suggests the texture of the rocks and stone walls in the landscape, the deep browns become trees or boats, and the vivid blues evoke the sea and the sky beyond. In this way, the whole composition represents the view out of the room and beyond an open window.
Nicholson described this inspirational view and the new living arrangements at Chy-an-Kerris in a letter to his friend, the curator and collector, Jim Ede, `It faces due N. - looking out to the Atlantic horizon with St Ives, like Greece, coming out into the bay on one side & Godrevy lighthouse & its rocks and N. Cornwall on the other - the sea as I write is blue beyond belief & small white yachts & an occasional brown fishing boat are here & there radiating from St Ives, a mysterious cloud bank on the horizon fades in a haze into a pale blue sky - but I like even better the due S. view which is as close & personal & warm as the N. one is cold and remote - there my bedroom I thought at first was a rather terrible Victorian pagoda but it turns out whitewashed, to an exceptionally lovely little DUCCIO or Fra Angelico cell with two fragile white pillars & strange & rather lovely shaped ceiling & casement windows with the hot sun which comes in all day & changes to bright moonlight at night. I see a lovely old Cornish roof with a palm tree & pines & nice pale coloured & flowering shrubs & next door but one a snow-white walled garden with bright green leaves & red flowers & black cats in it & rather like Paris suburb or the S. of France in feeling. Barbara for the first time since the war has a room for a studio & has been able to get her blocks of stone & wood, & her large sculptures out - the room is absurd because it really might be 7 Mall Studios only with the blue sea outside' (Ben Nicholson, letter to H.S. Ede, 29 August 1942, Kettle's Yard Archive, University of Cambridge).