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Lot Essay
The present composition is one of a only a small number of townscapes painted by the artist. Interestingly, 1924 (first abstract painting, Chelsea) (Tate) painted by her husband, Ben Nicholson, employs a closely related palette spectrum. We are very grateful to Jovan Nicholson for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.
A windowsill still-life that is also a cityscape, this boldly abstracted image brilliantly orchestrates blocks and patches of colour over the canvas, in overlapping layers and strong pattern. ‘All painting is to me painting of air and sky — that holds colours and light — not pictures of objects’, the artist said. As in much of Nicholson’s work, a sense of wonder pervades the ordinary, as if she had successfully tapped the spiritual in the everyday, and given us access to the essential mystery of life. In both this painting and lot 339, it is evident that flowers were, in her own phrase: ‘the secret of the cosmos’.
A.L.
A windowsill still-life that is also a cityscape, this boldly abstracted image brilliantly orchestrates blocks and patches of colour over the canvas, in overlapping layers and strong pattern. ‘All painting is to me painting of air and sky — that holds colours and light — not pictures of objects’, the artist said. As in much of Nicholson’s work, a sense of wonder pervades the ordinary, as if she had successfully tapped the spiritual in the everyday, and given us access to the essential mystery of life. In both this painting and lot 339, it is evident that flowers were, in her own phrase: ‘the secret of the cosmos’.
A.L.