Ben Nicholson lived near St. Ives in Cornwall from 1938 to 1958. During the Second World War he produced a number of small views through an open window. After experimenting with abstract white reliefs in the 1930s, Nicholson became more ambivalent about abstraction. In the late 1940s he wrote that “the kind of painting I find exciting is not necessarily representational or nonrepresentational, but musical and architectural.” This view of St. Ives depicts boats in the harbor glimpsed across the neighboring rooftops, while the foreground objects on the windowsill appear as a series of interlocking shapes. Gallery label for A Decade of Gifts and Acquisitions (Yale Center for British Art, 2017-06-01 - 2017-08-13)
