landscape | still life | drinking glasses | goblet | wine glass | sculpture | Neolithic | time | transparent | abstract art | geometric abstraction | pedestal | food | wine
Associated Places:
Saint Ives | Cornwall | England | United Kingdom
Currently On View:
On view
Exhibition History:
In a New Light: 500 Years of British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2025-04-01 - 2026-01-30)Art in Focus : St Ives Abstraction (Yale Center for British Art, 2013-04-12 - 2013-09-29)Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11)Revisiting Traditions [BAC 20th century painting & sculpture] (Yale Center for British Art, 2002-04-30 - 2005-05-18)20th Century Paintings and Sculpture (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-01-27 - 2000-04-30)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998-05-01 - 1998-07-05)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Queensland Art Gallery, 1998-07-15 - 1998-09-06)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1998-09-16 - 1998-11-15)
Publications:
Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977-1986 : Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1986, p. 17, cover, no. 42, N590.2 .A7 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Exhibition at Durlacher Gallery, ART News, vol. 54, May 1955, p. 52, N1 +A6 Oversize (Haas)Gwithian, ART News, vol. 60, December 1961, p. 25, N1 +A6 Oversize (Haas) Also available at BeineckeGwithian, Burlington Magazine, vol. 103, December 1961, p. vi, N1 B87+ Oversize Also available on JSTORNorbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, Phaidon, London, 1993, pp. 290-91, no. 2777, NJ18 N51 L95 1993 (YCBA)Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden : Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, pp. 20,21,194-195, no. 81, fig. 19, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)May 1955 ( Gwithian ), Modern Painters, vol. 20, no. 7, September 2008, p. 64, ND468 +M57 Oversize (YCBA)May 1955 : Gwithian, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 128,no.1003, October 1986, cover, N1 B87 + (YCBA)John McDonald, A Feast of Mellon, Sydney Morning Herald, May 9, 1998, p. 14, ProQuest News & Newspapers : Global NewsstreamPaintings, reliefs, drawings, With an introduction by Herbert Read , Lund Humphries, London, 1955, pl. 134, J18 N51 +948R Oversize (LSF)Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 1, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Duncan Robinson, Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977 - 1986, , Burlington Magazine, vol. 128, October 1986, cover, p. 17, no. 42, cover, N1 .B87 128:3 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Sotheby's sale catalogue : Modern British drawings, paintings and sculpture ... the property of Mrs. Mary Keene ... : 13 December 1961, Sotheby's, Sotheby's, London, December 13, 1961, p. 49, lot no. 224, Film B12, Part IV, Reel 67 (YCBA)St Ives abstraction, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2013, p. 22, V 2475 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
Between 1939 and 1958, Nicholson lived near Gwithian, a village in Cornwall on the south coast of England that had been a haven for artists in the interwar years. In this painting, the hazy blue wash recalls the open skies above the town, and the bold accents of color evoke the boats in its harbor. Gwithian was also the site of a Stone Age settlement, whose traces appeared in the landscape as abstract formations embedded with rocks. The work’s beige interlocking planes may refer to these remains and to the sand dunes for which the village was also known. Nicholson highlights the enduring quality of this provincial English landscape, which was then under threat by postwar urban expansion. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2025