Ben Nicholson, O.M. (1894-1982)

The present work was a gift from the artist to his old friend Marcus Brumwell. Long before Ben Nicholson became known as an abstract painter, he was trying out his spare, modernist style as a graphic designer. Nicholson was hired by advertising man Brumwell, and the two men became close friends. Nicholson had met Marcus and Irene Brumwell in the late 1920s when he and his wife Winifred had been living in Dulwich and it was Brumwell who introduced Nicholson to Cornwall. In 1928, he invited Nicholson and the painter Christopher Wood to stay in a family holiday home beside the creek at Feock, south of Truro. Nicholson painted the view from the window over Carrick Roads. It was on this visit that Nicholson met the St Ives fisherman Alfred Wallis. This meeting had a profound effect on how both painters approached composition, perspective and indeed on the often irregularly shaped pictures that were produced.

Brumwell proved to be an important early patron of avant-garde British artists including Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo. Hepworth's seminal sculpture Three Forms, 1935, in the collection of Tate, London, was formerly in Marcus Brumwell's collection.

In 1958 Ben moved to Switzerland with his third wife Felicitas Vogler (Hepworth and Nicholson having divorced in 1951). The following January saw the opening of a major exhibition of his work at the Charles Lienhard Gallery in Zurich, where he showed 106 works.