Room guide
Gallery 4: 1940s and 1950s
After the second world war, Nicholson's art was dominated by still life paintings, sometimes with the subject set against a landscape.
The fragmented, abstracted forms are drawn and painted over subtly-worked, textured grounds. To create these grounds Nicholson would repeatedly apply and rub off paint, revealing a variety of layers of colour. Continuing his lifelong fascination with surface texture, these grounds were compared to the wind- and sea-worn rocks of Cornwall. He compared the laborious scraping that produced them to his mother's scrubbing of the kitchen table.
Once he left Britain for Switzerland, Nicholson continued with his scraped surfaces but abandoned subject matter for a return to reliefs.
Works displayed in this room
- 1940 (painted relief - plover's egg blue)
Oil on carved board
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh - 1945 (still life)
Oil on canvas
Tate. Purchased 1945 - 22 July 1947 (still life - Odyssey I)
Oil on canvas
British Council - 11 November 1947 (Mousehole)
Oil and pencil on canvas mounted on wood
British Council - 14 March 1947 (still life - spotted curtain)
Oil and pencil on board
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections - March 1949 (Trencrom)
Oil and pencil on canvas
British Council - 20 October 1951 (St Ives harbour from Trezion)
Oil and pencil on board
Private Collection - February 1953 (contrapuntal)
Oil on Canvas
Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London - 28 February 1953 (vertical seconds)
Oil on canvas
Tate. Purchased 1955 - July 1953 (Cyclades)
Oil and pencil on curved board
Private Collection - 2 February 1954
Oil and pencil on canvas
Tate. Bequeathed by Miss E.M. Hodgkins 1977 - May 1954 (Delos)
Oil and pencil on canvas
On loan to the Whitworth Art Gallery from private collection - 8 September 1954 (Torcello)
Oil and pencil on canvas
Tate. Bequeathed by Miss E.M. Hodgkins 1977 - August 1956 (Val d'Orcia)
Oil, gesso and pencil on board
Tate. Purchased 1965