[AMENDMENT: please note the lot is sized 13 x 34.5 cm not 14 x 23.5 cm as previously stated]Ben Nicholson OM, British 1894–1982 - Wall on Beach, 1979; ink and wash on paper, signed, titled and dated verso 'Nicholson May 79 Wall on Beach' and studio...

[AMENDMENT: please note the lot is sized 13 x 34.5 cm not 14 x 23.5 cm as previously stated]
Ben Nicholson OM,
British 1894–1982 -

Wall on Beach, 1979;

ink and wash on paper, signed, titled and dated verso 'Nicholson May 79 Wall on Beach' and studio label verso, 13 x 34.5 cm (ARR)

Provenance: Waddington Galleries, London, no.B7062; Montpelier Studio, London, no.590; Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, no.N35; Sotheby's, London, Modern British and Irish Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, 10 October 1990; Sotheby's, London, Post-War and Contemporary British Art, 1 July 1991; private collection, where purchased from the above.

Note: Ben Nicholson was a central member of the St Ives School in the early 20th century, and exerted an immense influence on the shape of British art to follow. Nicholson, the son of artists William Nicholson and Mabel Pryde, studied at the Slade in 1910-11, alongside contemporaries such as Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash, and Edward Wadsworth. His approach was later influenced by the leading proponents of abstract art in Europe, including Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian, both of whom he met, whilst his preoccupation with the simplicity of lines and forms also demonstrates an affinity with the work of Barbara Hepworth, to whom he was married to for a time. This work exemplifies Nicholson’s unmistakeable style, particularly his focus on the representation of objects through flattened shapes and blocks of contrasting colours. It is in this manner that Nicholson so powerfully reduces the world around him to its essential forms. Nicholson’s works are on display in a large number of notable public collections in Britain, including in Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, Tate Britain, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Courtauld Gallery in London.