Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981)
Ragged Robin
Nicholson was born in Oxford into an eminent family, prominent in art and politics. She was encouraged to paint from an early age by her grandfather, George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle, who was an accomplished painter and friend of the Pre-Raphaelites. She later attended the Byam Shaw Art School.
In 1920 she married the artist Ben Nicholson with whom, over the subsequent 18 years, she would form a mutually influential partnership. They moved to Bankshead, Cumberland, which would become home for the rest of her life. Here she created a garden with wild flowers. The painting of these flowers, their translucent colours, often in the foreground, or on a window ledge with landscape in the far distance, became her central motif and content.
Following her separation from Ben (1931/2) she left for Paris, where she spent half of each year (1932-1938). During this time she briefly experimented with abstraction.
Her work was exhibited in solo exhibitions primarily in London, Edinburgh, Leicester and Cambridge. She also participated in joint exhibitions with Ben Nicholson in London at the Beaux Arts Gallery (1923) and at the Mayer Gallery (1925) and with Christopher Wood, with whom she became friends, at the Beaux Arts Gallery (1927).
Oil on canvas
Signed and inscribed with the artist’s address verso on stretcher
c.1930
There is a landscape painted on the reverse of the present work
24 x 24 ins (61 x 61 cms)
Provenance
Gifted by Dorothy Elmhirst to The Dartington Hall Trust, 25th March 1965
Exhibited
10th Exhibition The Seven & Five Society, Leicester Galleries.
London, January 1931
Dartington Hall, High Cross House, 2001 - 2010
The Seven and Five Society 1920-1935; The Fine Art Society
9 to 31st July 2014; no.20, illust pages 44-45
Literature
“I like painting flowers - 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- and I think that I know why this is so” (Unknown Colour: Paintings, Letters, Writings, by Winifred Nicholson)
Winifred Nicholson drew upon the theme of flowers throughout her career, having become entranced by the subject in the early 1920’s while living with her husband Ben Nicholson in Switzerland. Winifred particularly focused on the subject matter of flowers during her time spent at Villa Capricco in Lugano and in the rural countryside of Cumberland and Ragged Robbin is a quintessential example of this type. These paintings mark a distinctive period in Winifred’s career prior to her divorce and her time spent in Paris, where the focus of her work becomes briefly more abstracted.
Dorothy Elmhirst was the daughter of the multi- millionaire William Whitney, and was related to the Vanderbilts. She married Leonard Elmhirtst, moving to England in 1925 where they purchased Dartington Hall Estate. Together they founded the Dartington Hall Trust, whose charitable objectives were focused on rural regeneration, education and creative endeavour