Flower Piece

Location

Country: USA
City: Washington DC
Place: British Embassy

A group of plants with bright red, pink and white flowers sit on a table in front of a window, while a cloudy English landscape unfolds outside. This still life arrangement was a typical subject for Winifred Nicholson. She particularly enjoyed painting flowers and said:

I have tried to paint many things in many different ways, but my paintbrush always gives a tremor of pleasure when I let it paint a flower.

 

Nicholson was not concerned with botanical accuracy, but rather sought to present the plants and flowers as signifiers of the time and place in which they were painted. This work of art has been created using gestural and loose brushstrokes and illustrates the artist’s ability to communicate mood and atmosphere with an economy of marks, and to chromatically integrate the interior and exterior into a harmonious whole. Nicholson believed that colour was the most important element of painting and in 1944 published the article ‘The Liberation of Colour’ for the World Review, under the name Winifred Dacre.

 

Nicholson rarely signed or dated her paintings, asking, ‘what would it leave for art historians or collectors to do?’.

Winifred Nicholson was born in Oxford and studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London. After travelling in Asia, she married the artist Ben Nicholson in 1920. They lived between Switzerland and London. From 1928 to 1935 both were members of the Seven and Five Society, along with Christopher Wood, Ivon Hitchens, John Piper, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. After separating in 1931, Winifred moved to Paris with their children where artists including Jean Hélion and Piet Mondrian encouraged her to develop her own style. From 1939 she lived in Cumbria but regularly travelled abroad. Her career was overshadowed by the achievements of her ex-husband, yet a major memorial show at the Tate in 1987 helped to redress this.

Places

England, Cumbria

Subjects

still life, flower, plant pot, plate, field, outbuilding, window, curtain, table (as Subject)

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Winifred Nicholson (1893 - 1981)

Title

Flower Piece

Date

late 1920s

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 61.00 cm, width: 61.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Leicester Galleries, May 1964

Provenance

Collection of Mrs K. Pertwee; from whom purchased by Leicester Galleries, London; from whom purchased by the Ministry of Works in April 1964

GAC number

6416