Kevin Darling-Finan TMA02 A485 Y8567719

Raising the Flag of Modernism: Ben

Nicholsons 1938

The National Gallery has recently added to its collection a painting that encapsulates one of
the most complex, dynamic and contested moments in the history of modern British art.
Painted by Ben Nicholson, the heroic figure of the abstract movement in England, the
composition of 1938 (fig. 1) is disquietingly simple. Geometric zones of unmodulated hues,
red and yellow, blacks, white and greys delineated by lightly ruled pencil lock into a perfect,

seemingly static, matrix. Two expansive circles to the right relieve the works rectangular
severity without disrupting it: a floating white disc at the top, anchored by a crimson circle
offset below.

Despite its landscape format, 1938 bears no conceivable relation to natural topography.
Indeed there is little in this picture to link it to the landscape genre with which English
national identity remained so closely bound in the aftermath of the First World War. Named
simply for the year of its making, 1938 refuses both the motifs and perspective of naturalism.
It denies narrative. It withholds, even, the comfort of a descriptive title to rescue it from
generic anonymity. Alien it may seem, yet 1938 is an unmistakeable tour de force, its design
equally legible from up close and far away. Even if the viewer knows nothing of its origins,
the composition is unusually clear, certain and resolved, and it has an impact that far exceeds
its modest dimensions. It could be said, in fact, to possess many of the iconic qualities of a
national flag. One question that in 1938 might well have been asked is, whose national flag?
The making of a renegade
In a carefully posed portrait by Paul Laib from c.1933 (fig. 2), Nicholson presents as an
unsmiling figure, wearing black with a beret. Turning athletically to challenge the viewer, he
does not seem English, but rather, conveys the air of a revolutionary, artist or intellectual of
the Parisian Left Bank. If, then, it could be said that 1938 seems deliberately provocative in
its enigmatic assertiveness, so too does its maker.

Coming from an artistic background (the son of the successful Edwardian painter William
Nicholson) and steeped in an appreciation of the seen object, Nicholson always struggled to
resist his fathers seductive example as a supreme still-life painter. Nicholsons discovery of
Christian Science in 1918 and Cubism soon after, gave him the means to reach an alternative
world beyond appearances. He quickly outgrew any association he joined, starting with the
Seven and Five Society, an idiosyncratic group of artists mostly inspired by nature. Aware of
theory, yet scornful of dependence on it, throughout the 1930s Nicholson both joined and
formed artistic groups intending to convert them to his own intuitively defined version of
abstraction, and to provoke them out of what the critic Herbert Read called the slumbering
provincialism of British art.1
A key ally in this was a fellow artist (later to be his second wife), the sculptor Barbara
Hepworth, who he met in 1931. Nicholson joined her at the colony of artists and art writers
living in the leafy lanes of Hampstead, North London, a community that included the already
prominent sculptor Henry Moore. The heart of this community was a complex of purposebuilt studios at The Mall. Built in 1873 along a lane off Parkhill Road, they were unheated
and barely six metres square, with tiny doors and large east windows facing onto a garden.
The Frenchman Jean Hlion described the enclave as an English bateau-lavoir where Ben
and many other young enthusiasts were working out a new [abstract] art of restraint and
subtlety.2
The eminent art critic Herbert Read, who joined them in 1933, later called the community a
nest of gentle artists,3 a perception confirmed by another neighbour, H. S. (Jim) Ede, then
assistant keeper at the Tate Gallery: All these artists were familiars, constantly coming in
and out, and what is more, bringing their work, hot from its making, to show or give.4 The
equilibrium changed with Nicholsons arrival. While still primarily Cubist in 1931, his
paintings by 1933 had suddenly reduced to hand-drawn circles and squares, painted and
sometimes carved, reflecting his and Hepworths new affiliation with the strict new Parisian
abstract group, Abstraction-Cration. This quantum leap announced to fellow artists that
Nicholson had no further use for the figurative image, far less for Surrealism, which he felt
was only serving to extend the life of figuration. The choice seemed clear: join Nicholson or
else prove that Surrealism was not obsolete but was, rather, the more completely human (and
thus fitter) destiny for modern art. Among the followers Nicholson attracted were the painter
John Piper, his neighbour Cecil Stephenson and a pupil, Arthur Jackson (Hepworths
cousin).
Until this time, the self-appointed stabilising figure of the community at Hampstead had been
the older Surrealist artist Paul Nash, a veteran of the First World War and an authoritative
writer, but given to depression and chronic illness. In 1932 Nash sought to cement over the
fissures emerging among this gifted cluster of artists and to boost its fortunes with a new
group, Unit One. Its optimistic aim was to advance the cause of modern art through a united
exploration of the truly contemporary spirit in art.5 Aware of the domineering mission of
Ben and Bens boys (as he called them), Nash excluded Nicholson until the membership
was established.6 Nashs concerns were shared by Herbert Read, a staunch supporter of
Nicholson and then-editor of the Burlington Magazine. Like Nash, Read upheld a vision of
diversity in the arts, based on a British paradigm of liberal democracy. Although they
eventually included Nicholson in Unit One, Read, who would write the foreword for the
groups 1934 exhibition catalogue, also entertained the thought of excluding him in the name
of collective harmony.7 I tried, as Read later wrote, to argue, and I still believe, that such
dialectical oppositions are good for the progress of art.8

Clearly, by 1932 Nicholsons impatient sense of purpose had made itself felt. His goal,
although it was more intuited then articulated, was to make an English contribution to the
new non-objective art being forged on the Continent. Little known in England, the progress
of this new art form was mainly charted in non-English avant-garde publications, with a
notable exception being a short-lived English magazine, Ray-Art Miscellany, published by
Seven and Five member Sydney Hunt. Nicholson, on the other hand, during his visits to Paris
(where his first wife Winifred lived), gained first-hand knowledge of abstract art and the
international figures making it. Nicholsons unwillingness to wait for critics even welldisposed ones like Read to catch up with or disseminate his views impeded at times his
public reception.9 His aversion also to holding back in the interests of fellow artists whose
vision did not precisely match his own complicated the support he received among his peers.
Nash and Read became the first in a succession of British avant-garde figures who resorted to
fostering surrealisms in the name of balance.10 Later on when conservative critics singled out
Nicholsons abstraction as hostile, foreign and doctrinaire, Surrealism, despite its irrational
tendencies, was conversely praised for its supposed humanity and individualistic grounding
in emotion. As a result of this (at times artificial) promotion of Surrealism in the name of
creating a dialectical balance, the assimilation and production in Britain of Surrealist art
(and its later offshoot Neo-Romanticism) was accelerated; its progress, in a sense, pegged to
the extraordinary pace at which Nicholson, almost single-handedly, was developing
geometric abstraction.
For all its sophisticated interest in artistic developments on the Continent, Unit One stayed
very much a British affair. It did not attempt to harness the talent of the foreign artists and
intellectuals who, since 1933, had started to arrive in London in flight from Nazism. This
does not seem to reflect any nationalist chauvinism on Nashs part (despite Britains
prevalence in the interwar period under Stanley Baldwin), but rather, reflects the difficult
balance that Nash was already attempting to maintain between the groups eleven existing
members.11 As Read explained, anything much larger would have been unworkable.12
Nicholson had become a frequent visitor to France during the 1930s and joined a number of
groups there. Among the figures he met were Brancusi, Braque, Giacometti, Lipchitz, Man
Ray, Picasso and Zadkine; he also made links with leading Paris dealers and publishers
including Kahnweiler, Pierre Lob, Lonce Rosenberg, and Christian Zervos, editor and
publisher of Cahiers dart. In 1933 he and Hepworth were willingly recruited into
Abstraction-Cration, an exclusive non-figurative group formed by Jean Hlion after the
demise of its predecessor, Cercle et Carr (Circle and Square). Through Hlion they were
introduced to the Arps, Calder, Kandinsky, Mir and Antoine Pevsner and, most critically,
the De Stijl painter Piet Mondrian. Nicholsons revelatory encounter with space and
whiteness in Mondrians light-filled studio in April 1934 is now a matter of record. It
apparently confirmed for him the value of a series of white paintings and carved reliefs that
he had recently commenced in an attempt to radically distil form.13 It may further have
inspired his adoption of compass and ruler for plotting shapes in the quest for a transcendent
precision, which finds its ultimate expression in Nicholsons abstract works of mid 1937 to
1939.
Through these interactions Nicholson quickly became the main conduit for ideas and news
between his colleagues on either side of the Channel. In true revolutionary style, he
proclaimed himself a kind of ParisLondon liaison, reporting back to our small Belsize Pk
group.14 It was due in part to Nicholsons liaising, and in part to the growing international

influence of Herbert Reads writings, that leading foreign figures came to know of
Hampstead and to choose London over America as a destination. The Bauhaus architect
Walter Gropius was an early arrival, followed by his colleague Marcel Breuer, the Hungarian
Moholy-Nagy, the sculptor Naum Gabo and others. As the balance of creativity started tilting
from Paris towards London, Nicholson seized the opportunity to recruit new arrivals to his
own projects. He also sought to accommodate them in their new artistic world, as Hlion had
done for him in Paris.
Elected head of the formerly landscape-oriented Seven and Five Society, and backed by
fellow abstractionists, by 1934 Nicholson had eliminated its figurative artists and replaced
them with non-figurative ones. Changing its name to the more Constructivist-sounding 7 & 5
Abstract Group, he also invited foreign colleagues to join.15 Symbolically at least, the gesture
must have appeared to some ousted members of this once archetypically English group as a
callous act of invasion.
The arrival of triplets for Hepworth and Nicholson in October 1934 exacerbated the couples
poverty but it did not impede their work, which they needed more than ever to sell. It was
shortly after this event that Nicholson reported to Ede that he had met the director of the
National Gallery, Kenneth Clark, and that He & Mrs between them bought a white relief & a
ptg.16 In September 1935 Nicholson held his first one-man show of all-white reliefs at the
gallery of his dealers, Reid & Lefevre, at King Street, St James. It has recently been referred
to as the most coherent one-man modernist exhibition by an English artist before the Second
World War,17 but at the time it was described by the Daily Mail as Londons strangest
exhibition.18 Although Herbert Read valiantly pointed out the reliefs resonant spirituality,
viewed en masse it was shockingly apparent that they represented a comprehensive break
with all that had gone before in English art.19 Despite owning an example himself, Clark, as
head of the art establishment, felt compelled to speak up for naturalism, narrative and
expressivity. In the Listener Clark denounced the white series for its fatal defect of purity
and exposure of the poverty of human invention when forced to spin a web from its own
guts.20
Still recovering from the impact of the all-white exhibition, critics and the curious public
were presented in the next month with the 7 & 5 Abstract Groups final exhibition, again
entirely abstract. Commentators recoiled at the campaign-like onslaught. With no means of
understanding the purely constructivist abstract people, as Henry Moore called them, their
work appeared like the product of a foreign ideology [and] the epitome of continental
audacity.21
It cannot be denied that Nicholson deliberately cultivated a militant persona in his
engagement with the art world and surrounded himself with a platoon of followers. But
aggressive posturings had been fairly standard for the self-styled avant-garde since the First
World War starting with the combative rhetoric of the Vorticist Wyndham Lewis. In 1933
Nash and Read had advertised the Mayor Gallery as the headquarters of Unit One, while
their architectural colleagues in an equivalent group called themselves MARS, a title which,
as one member recalled, nicely combined a sense of militancy with a vision of planetary
exploration.22 Although he was interested in world events and identified with Left politics,
Nicholson contemplated but never went so far as joining the Communist party, unlike Henry
Moore and Picasso.23

By 1936 the need for Nicholson to project a formidable image of himself and the movement
he represented had in fact become strategically vital. A level of tactical shrewdness had also
become necessary in his dealings with ostensible allies such as John Piper. A former follower
and now occasional critic of Nicholson, in May 1936 Piper had taken issue with Nicholson
about his tendency to force artistic movements. You cant encourage history while its
going on, Piper told him, you can only recognize it when it becomes history.24 But Pipers
observation was somewhat disingenuous as he, like Clark, was simultaneously engaged in
steering Surrealism and not Constructivism into the history books.
The International Surrealist Exhibition took place in London that summer, organised by
Herbert Read and others. It attracted huge attention, in no small part due to stunts, which
included Salvador Dal lecturing in a diving suit. It upstaged completely a significant
travelling exhibition of international abstract art, Abstract and Concrete, mounted in the
preceding months by Nicholsons friend Nicolete Gray.25 Nicholson may have viewed the
sideshow into which Surrealism had degenerated as a chance to garner respect for abstraction
as a dignified alternative for modern art. Public credibility was particularly important at this
juncture as he and Read were seriously contemplating establishing a Museum of Living Art
devoted to non-figurative art.26 Paul Laibs portrait of Nicholson, dated c.1933, suggests that
Nicholson was already cultivating many of the qualities that might be expected of a leader of
the new abstract art movement: courage, control, simplicity, seriousness and a reserved
sophistication.27
Marshalling a theoretical alternative of gravitas and breadth to the Surrealist exhibition was
slower. In 1936 Nicholson, the architect J. L. Martin and the Russian sculptor Naum Gabo
conceived an International Constructivist manifesto, which aimed to define and give
coherence to the spectrum of Constructivism as it was being practised across disciplines and
nationalities. Entitled Circle: An International Survey of Constructivist Art, it represented in
key respects a dialectical opposite to Andr Bretons Surrealist Manifesto of 1925, in which
Surrealism had been defined as dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control
exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.28 Circle was published in
July 1937 to coincide with an eponymous exhibition, and its typographically severe cover
design featured a list of sixty-eight signatories: painters, sculptors, architects and writers.29
Inside, essays and illustrations by contributors demonstrated the expressive powers of line,
colour and shape, independent of any association with the seen world. Whereas the architects,
designers and town planners showed how Constructivisms universal and rational principles
could be applied for utopian ends, Gabo spoke for Nicholson and himself in maintaining that
creative art, while similarly controlled, was free of such utilitarian obligations.
Against a background of rising fascism and communism in Europe, critics viewed this sudden
solidarity among Constructivists with alarm. Commentators from Left and Right attacked
their purist, ivory tower agenda, Bolshevik-style manifesto and rigid, inhuman and
conformist rules, and likened their art to an aesthetic equivalent of the Nuremberg and
Moscow rallies.30 In particular, leftists, shaken by Stalins purging of his own intellectuals in
the 193638 Moscow Trials, viewed the exclusionary zeal of the Constructivists with
apprehension. Buckling under the strain of supporting both Surrealists and Constructivists
amid this volatile political climate, Herbert Read retreated from the North London scene.
Guns, he said, were being fired at him from every side.31 Undeterred, Nicholson continued
working on his white abstract reliefs while editing Circle. Then, in mid 1937, with Circle
completed, Nicholson embarked upon a series of paintings in which the unmodulated primary
colours of De Stijl and the architectural severity of the Bauhaus influence merge. It is out of

this chaotic and distracting context of artistic and global contestations that the poised and
magnificently static painting, 1938, emerged.
Mondrian
As the situation in Paris deteriorated, Nicholsons first wife, Winifred, evacuated her children
to England and, in late September 1938, with the urging of Nicholson and Hepworth,
persuaded Piet Mondrian to accompany her to safety. Nicholson found Mondrian
accommodation and studio space on the first floor of 60 Parkhill Road, Hampstead, where he
retained a studio in the garden (fig. 3). For the next eleven months the two artists worked
intensively in their austere adjacent studios. Hepworth later recalled how in that period Piet
Mondrian became a pillar of strength to Nicholson and herself.32

The impact of Mondrians London visit upon Nicholsons work at this time has often been
discussed. The actual process of the change it effected upon Nicholsons work has not. New
scientific analysis of 1938 suggests that the painting may have been partially, if not fully,
undertaken during Mondrians time in Hampstead. What is most immediately apparent is
Nicholsons decision to introduce a strong element of pure yellow. This was a colour that
Winifred, as Nicholson was fully aware, considered to be Mondrians own discovery.33 While
its use does not in itself prove that Nicholson painted 1938 after September of that year,
infrared reflectography now reveals that this yellow was initially used to form vertical and

horizontal bars of different widths to divide the canvas both horizontally and vertically, with
the horizontal yellow line joining the yellow vertical to the left and co-terminating with the
right edge of the lower white rectangle. The result was a grid-like structure, unusual in
Nicholsons oeuvre (fig. 4).34

It seems possible that this structural innovation may correspond to a tentative breakthrough in
Mondrians own work that took place in the London studio in late 1938 in which Mondrian
revisited an isolated work from 1933 entitled Lozenge composition with four yellow lines.
Around October it appears that Mondrian resurrected his earlier idea of employing yellow
lines of varying thickness. From late 1938 onwards Mondrian began to incorporate them into
his grid paintings to the eventual exclusion of the dark lines for which he was formerly
known. This experimental shift, which is widely believed to have taken place after
Mondrians transferral to New York, is recorded in drawings and a painting started in
London. The latter, New York City, 3, is now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection,
Madrid.35
Another compositional element in Nicholsons painting that may have been affected was his
use of the circle, a key feature in his oeuvre that above all maintained his independence from
Mondrian. Nicholsons identity had became so inseparable from this motif that he had, earlier
in the year, placed a small red disc beside his signature in the poster he designed for the Shell
Oil Company.36 Nicholsons ideas about how different circles functioned in his painting were
also well developed, even before 1941, when he described how, when two squares are placed
in proximity to a pencilled circle, you can create a most exciting tension between these

forces and, if at any time, this tension becomes too exciting, you can easily, by the smallest
mark made by a compass in its centre, transfix the circle like any butterfly!37
The same infrared photograph (fig. 4) now shows that a third circle exists beneath the pale
grey paint layer in the upper left of the canvas. At its centre is a small compass hole (digitally
highlighted in red). This in itself might not be particularly surprising, given Nicholsons
tendency not to make preliminary drawings. However, in this instance Nicholsons decision
to alter the position of his circles may have been a result of Mondrians advice, which the
younger artist had formed a habit of soliciting. Mondrian, who was described in 1941 as
probably the only painter in the world who hasnt drawn a curved line in 20 years,38
nevertheless took an interest in how Nicholson used circles. He wrote in 1940, I do like your
photo of relief only I should like the big round a little otherwise placed: it goes to the left.39
The evident increased influence of Mondrians work upon Nicholson cannot simply be
ascribed to Nicholsons knowledge of his friends theoretical writings, despite the fact that
Nicholson had recently edited Mondrians essay on Neo-Plasticism in Circle. It seems instead
more likely to have come about through his close proximity to the older figure, which until
now had been limited by the geographical distance between them. By late 1938 Nicholson
had also come to own a painting by Mondrian, which he greatly prized.40 There seems no
need to doubt Nicholson when he states: I could not be bothered to read Mondrians theories.
What I got from him and it was a great deal I got direct from his paintings.41
In March 1939 in the months following the publication of Circle, Reid & Lefevre held
another one-man show of Nicholsons work, rivalling that of the all-white reliefs exhibition
they had staged four years earlier. It unveiled the results of the most rigorous phase yet in
Nicholsons career. In it were displayed forty-one works: nineteen chromatic paintings,
sixteen white reliefs, two gouaches and four drawings. Although not previously noted in the
paintings exhibition history, 1938 was included in this exhibition, probably no. 8 in the
catalogue.42 It is fascinating to see in an archival photograph of the show (fig. 5) how
Nicholsons paintings and white reliefs (which were almost equal in number) were hung
alternately, as though to stress the fact that the white reliefs had not been an icy, monolithic
end in themselves at the expense of colour a criticism often voiced by the art press.

The overwhelming impression of grand unity created in the Lefevre Gallery showroom is
assisted through the elegantly uniform presentation of the works in simple timber frames,
without cluttering labels. Nicholson exercised great control over the presentation of his reliefs
and paintings, and it has often been assumed, because of his comments on the subject, that he
always made his own frames.43 In the 1930s, however, Nicholson was having his paintings
and reliefs framed by a Mr Arthur Colley in Haverstock Hill, who worked to his instructions.
His neighbours, the artist Cecil Stephenson and his wife, Sybil, also occasionally made his
frames. Cecil, who was a trained engineer, had a well-equipped workshop in which he could
machine mouldings to Nicholsons specifications, while Sybil possibly finished them and
fitted the works.44
Reid & Lefevres undertaking to stage an exhibition of such uncompromisingly abstract art
shows a degree of boldness that no publicly funded gallery could have risked in 1939. To
display so many works, named only for the year in which they were made, and to present
them without labels, was to court criticism from uninitiated viewers. The public towards
whom the exhibition was directed was the London cognoscenti, a significant portion of whom
comprised progressive architects and architectural critics associated with the MARS group,
Unit One and Circle.45 It was this fraternity who consistently purchased, commissioned and
wrote about Nicholsons most difficult Constructivist works from 1935 onward, and found
ways to incorporate them into their interiors.46 One of these patrons was John Summerson,
who had married Hepworths sister, Elizabeth, in 1938. Summerson also became the first
owner of 1938.47 In a key review of the 1939 exhibition, Summerson extolled the sensual
appeal of Nicholsons new coloured works:

Some of Nicholsons new paintings seem to me irresistible. Their apparent simplicity lays
bare the complexity which results from placing together areas of different proportion,
different texture, different colour a complexity which the painter controls and makes
eloquent in an extraordinary way.48
For Nicholsons admirers, the Reid & Lefevre exhibition was his most groundbreaking show
yet, for it proved that he was literally bursting out of his monochromatic ivory tower to
embrace the emotional dimensions of colour. Their optimism, and perhaps relief, was
expressed by Herbert Read who announced, Now that form has been freed from its
representational functions, [for example, in the white reliefs] colour too is released for
experimentation.49 The palpable excitement generated by the Reid & Lefevre show was
possibly heightened by news just circulating that the American heiress Peggy Guggenheim
had declared her intention to open a London museum of modern art. This museum, which
was to be devoted to all modernisms, was to be headed by Herbert Read, a proposal that both
Clark and Nicholson greeted with delight.50
War
The Reid & Lefevre exhibition was to be Nicholsons last major showing before the outbreak
of war. In May Nicholson and Cecil Stephenson dug a bomb shelter in the garden at The
Mall,51 and in August 1939, when Hitler and Stalin signed a treaty of non-aggression,
Nicholson and Hepworth took their family to Cornwall. Elizabeth Summerson packed up
their studios. Living in St Ives on the generosity of their friends Adrian and Margaret Stokes,
the Nicholsons needed to re-establish a source of income far from the art market in London.
With England under threat, that market had changed; the public had started buying English
landscapes and little else. In March 1940 Nicholsons dealer McNeill Reid informed him that
he had no hope of getting another abstract show and suggested some semi-representational
works would do better instead:
I dont think from our point of view that pure abstract painting is any use; we never sell much
of it, and no matter how great our interest one of our problems today is to keep ourselves
alive and to find what might sell, without reducing our artistic standards any more than we
can help.52
Faced with no alternative, Nicholson evolved a commercially successful hybrid genre of
abstract painting that incorporated landscape elements and delicate secondary tones such as
pink and green. Although he called these lyrical works his potboilers, they clearly convey
the artists appreciation of his new Cornish surroundings. For this factor alone many critics
were mollified, as the new St Ives paintings clearly manifested, in common with the
landscapes of artists such as Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland, a sense of genius locus,
much vaunted by figures such as Clark in this period of crisis, and which paintings such as
1938 so conspicuously lacked.
Despite what looks like an embracing of Neo-Romanticism, Nicholson continued to make
Constructivist works, even if he could not easily exhibit them. Kenneth Clarks use of his
official role in the War Artists Advisory Committee to further kill off geometric abstract art
was yet another obstacle. In 1935 Clark had implied that abstraction was essentially
German for its over-reliance on theory.53 Now, in 1939, Clark held that abstract art involved
a wilful denial of painful actualities, causing our indignation to overflow and swamp our
detached contemplation of shapes and colours. To be a pure painter seems almost immoral.54

From the very first list of artists that Clark drew up in September 1939 to undertake paid
artistic projects in the national interest until his last, drawn up in February 1940, Clark left
out Nicholson. That it was his intention to destroy abstract art seems patently clear from a
remark he made to Herbert Read in November 1939. With Nicholson safely four hundred and
fifty kilometres away in the south, Clark observed that abstract art and so-called functional
architecture were dead and a damned good job too.55
For those like Clark who chose Surrealism over abstraction when opting for a stream of
modern art, this destruction of the Constructivist cause was one of the most positive
outcomes of the war. The Death of Abstract Art, crowed Geoffrey Grigson in the Listener
in 1940. Grigson then went on, condescendingly, to pronounce:
War is emphatic; it may not innovate, but it emphasises inclinations which were concealed by
fashion or familiarity war was only the climax of a total state of affairs which was helping
to scotch the drift towards abstract art. Still, abstraction is not something to be buried
dishonourably and then forgotten. It was one of the ways taken, up to a point, by the livelier
artists of the last 30 or 40 years.56
Encouraged by Read, Mondrian and Summerson, Nicholson ignored provocations of this
kind. Although Nicholsons dogged attempts to re-insert Constructivist paintings back into
his dealers stock were met with reproach in March 1944,57 by this time his abstract work was
finally starting to be shown in the public gallery sector.58 In September 1944 Philip Hendy,
director of the Leeds City Art Gallery, mounted the first non-commercial retrospective of
Nicholsons work at Temple Newsam, a stately home on the citys outskirts to which Hendy
had relocated the Leeds art collection for the duration of the war.59 An exhibition of this kind
was impossible at the Tate, which remained closed during the war until 1946. But even had it
been open, its director, John Rothenstein, felt nothing for abstract art. As he stated: I fail,
beyond a certain point, to respond to the uncommunicative forms and relationships which
constitute at the same time the language and message of abstract art.60 Rothensteins
assistant keeper, Robin Ironside, who had succeeded Ede in 1936 and was himself a
Surrealistic and Neo-Romantic painter, was actively hostile to Nicholsons abstraction, which
to him represented a continental reliance upon theory over the British preference for
empiricism and was thus unwelcomely foreign and barren.61
Herbert Read opened the Temple Newsam exhibition and Summerson travelled up to Leeds,
reporting back to Nicholson who was too unwell to attend.62 The Times covered the event: in
measured but positive terms, its writer called Nicholson the doyen of abstract art in
England, and observed how well the show illustrated the logical unfolding of Nicholsons
career, from still-life painter to abstract painter by 1933, and finally to Constructivist: From
then [1933] it is a very short time before he has reduced painting to its barest essentials: to
rectangles of primary colours flatly painted on large areas of grey and white.63
The Leeds retrospective marked a turning of the tide for Nicholson in so far as it heralded a
more rational era in which abstract art could once again be addressed. It also brought together
three people who were to become a powerful triumvirate in championing Nicholsons art in
the postwar era. Herbert Read and John Summerson were both to produce monographs on
Nicholson in 1948. In the meantime, Hendys influence on the art world was increasing, as a
year later (in 1945) he was appointed director of the National Gallery, replacing Sir Kenneth
Clark at the pinnacle of the art establishment.

Polemic 1946
In the more liberal culture of the immediate postwar era, 1938 suddenly become a posterchild for a fresh British outlook. The painting shot to fame in a new philosophical journal of
the highest profile. Polemic, edited by Humphrey Slater (a former artist and communist who
had distinguished himself in the Home Guard), was created to commission essays by writers
who are opposed to the drift back to Romance. It showcased the new thinking of the most
famous British philosophers of the day, George Orwell, Bertrand Russell and A. J. Ayer.
Nicholson was invited to design the covers of its first two issues. The maiden issue sold out
in just two days, such was the hunger for serious reading matter at the end of the war.64
In the second issue of Polemic Slater dedicated a three-page article to Nicholson arguing that
abstract art could elicit emotion and was therefore capable of heightening human experience.
One of the works he reproduced in colour to illustrate his case was 1938. Slaters decision to
champion Nicholson in an anguished world at a moment of trembling peace, and at a time
when abstract painting is now not in vogue,65 reflects the concerted push on the part of its
editor and his eminent authors to put British intellectual and aesthetic debate back onto an
analytic and speculative footing after a period of seven years in which a sentimental
nationalism had dominated British cultural life. Slaters desire to revive and stimulate wider
understanding and acceptance of Nicholsons abstraction was part of a plan to draw the artist,
after an era of conservatism, into a high-profile, united front for literary and visual
experimenters.
This was the first time that Nicholsons Constructive paintings were reproduced in colour, an
event all the more notable in light of the ongoing restrictions on wartime printing. It fulfilled
a supreme wish on the part of the artist, who had become convinced that the publics inability
to appreciate his abstract paintings was due to a lack of good colour reproductions.66 The
impact of 1938 was immediate. In the fourth issue, another piece appeared on Nicholson in
Polemic, this time by Stefan Themerson, an avant-garde Russian-Polish refugee and
filmmaker turned philosopher with links to the Constructivist Moholy-Nagy. In his article
Themerson echoed Slaters endorsement of Nicholson, but went further to demonstrate that
Nicholsons pictures, which Themerson called still-lifes, referred to objects, squares and
circles, as realistically as other still-life painters depicted fish. To illustrate his point,
Themerson used a caricature of Nicholsons 1938 (fig. 6). Its visual quotation of the work is
powerful proof that 1938 had acquired recognition within this distinguished philosophical
context, following from its reproduction in colour in the same series two issues earlier.

In representing the qualities of a particular shape, Themerson argued, Nicholson, importantly,

was not dabbling in universals but in particular realities. This was a claim that Nicholson
himself might not have made about his work previously, although it was an idea that he was
gradually coming around to.67 It was an ingenious point to make at this particular moment
because, with the Second World War just over and another seeming imminent with the buildup to Cold War, the credibility of universal concepts had come under question following their
abuse in the hands of ideologues. To praise a notion of whiteness in Nicholsons work was,
in Themersons view, tantamount to validating other generalities, such as the State,
Fatherland, God, Race and discipline, in the name of which conflicts continued to be
justified.68
Themersons article and whimsical diagram (possibly the work of his illustrator wife,
Franciszka,) deliberately adopted the plain, expository mode of his mentor Bertrand Russell
to put Nicholsons art squarely back into the realm of British empiricism. It also evoked the
simple pictograms that champions of modern art had begun to use to make links between old
masters and contemporary art, and to clearly explain the developmental stages between them.
This new rationalisation of modern art, as Virginia Button has called it, had been
inaugurated by the director of New Yorks Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barrs nowfamous flow diagram of 1936 in which he showed the evolution of abstract art (fig. 7).69

While Nicholson had been appreciated since the early 1930s by intellectual figures abroad,
Polemic was crucial to him for regaining respectability as a prominent voice within the
vanguard of liberal British thinkers. Polemic also lifted the heavy stigma of adjectives such as
alien, doctrinaire, unfeeling and crypto-fascist from Nicholsons abstract works, and
repositioned these same works within a new discourse of cool, liberal rationalism,
sympathetic to science, hostile to the intellectual manifestations of romanticism, and

markedly anti-Communist that Polemic represented.70 Nicholsons painting was chosen as

the visual analogue of the positions promoted by figures such as Orwell, Russell and Ayer.
Nicholson himself thought hard about the concessions he would need to make to assume the
new role of ambassador of liberalism now open to him, and he sought ways to align his
artistic ideas with the new order. Already in 1941 he had speculated that liberation of form
and colour is closely linked with all other liberations one hears about, and that therefore
abstract art ought, perhaps, to come into one of our lists of war-aims.71 In the aftermath of
the war and the escalating hostility between the USSR and its former Western allies,
Nicholson came to the view that recent world events had rendered extreme positions in art, as
well as politics, repugnant.72 He also claimed to welcome the co-existence of modern
Romantic art, and to find a positive value in the contrasts between different artistic
approaches,73 a pluralist position remarkably close to the one espoused by Read and Nash in
1933. The greatest concession of all, however, was Nicholsons decision to disavow the term
Constructivist, to free himself of its associations with his old friend Naum Gabo and the
Russian movement.74
The two monographs by Summerson and Read on Nicholson that appeared in 1948 also did
much to reinvent the artist as a liberal humanist. Reads book featured 1938 among the
handful of works illustrated in colour.75 Quickly then, in the aftermath of the war, 1938 was
becoming linked in the public mind with the new values being ascribed to Nicholsons work,
and was shedding its former associations with aggressive and doctrinaire foreign art. In his
preface to the popular and accessibly priced Penguin Modern Painters volume, John
Summerson dismissed the notion that Nicholson was influenced by Constructivism, stating
that he had only ever been influenced by individuals, not trends.76 Herbert Reads larger,
more expensively produced two-volume work was designed to cement Nicholsons
importance in the international art field. It was, as one artist later put it, the monograph that
went into the museum library [throughout] the world.77 In his introduction Read emphasised
Nicholsons individualism, writing that no painter could be less ideological, in the sense of
using his craft to illustrate a thesis and that Ben Nicholson has never accepted such an
extreme position as Mondrians Neo-Plasticism.78
The remaking of Nicholson as an apolitical, liberal artist has particular implications for the
Melbourne painting. In 1950 the Museum of Modern Art in New York asked Nicholson to
comment on a closely related version, also entitled 1938.79 Possibly sensing a trap, given the
climate of Cold War paranoia, in his reply Nicholson avoided all mention of the
Constructivist, internationalist milieu in which he had painted the 1938 works.80 Instead he
cautiously compared the painting to an 1895 poster entitled Girl reading by the Beggarstaff
Brothers (his father William Nicholson and uncle James Pryde), thereby furnishing the work
with a conceptual provenance that was purely British, and a Victorian (pre-Russian
Revolutionary) one at that.81
In 1948 Hendy and Read were appointed to the Fine Arts Advisory Committee (FAAC), a
branch of the British Council, on a board now weighted in favour of contemporary art. In the
three years since the end of the war, the British Council had adapted from being an overt
propagandistic body into an unacknowledged arm of foreign affairs supported through a
velvet glove of high culture.82 The FAACs role was to use art to build bridges with former
enemies and to promote Britain as an exemplary model of democracy and diverse cultural
excellence. The decision to appoint Hendy and Read ensured that between 1947 and 1960
Nicholson was selected for forty international exhibitions, including So Paulo in 1941 and

Australia in 1949. Then, in 1954, he was selected along with Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon
for the British Pavilion in that years Venice Biennale.
1938 was included among the fifty-three works by Nicholson at this international
exhibition.83 Despite postwar paper restrictions, the British Council managed to publish a
separate catalogue of its trio of artists at the pavilion. Nicholson received top billing on the
cover and his section led the catalogue with an introduction by Herbert Read. The painting
then travelled with the Nicholson section as part of a stand-alone monographic exhibition to
the premier art venues of the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Switzerland.84 The Council
also arranged for a black and white illustration of 1938 to be included in the Stedelijk
catalogue. For the Paris leg, the most prestigious of the tour, the catalogue was translated and
produced in colour. In 1955, when the show returned to British soil, it was mounted once
again in an amended form at the Tate Gallery. This invitation, made at the instigation of the
director, John Rothenstein, who had been on the same panel as Hendy and Read, was a
surprise to Nicholson, who thought it very broad-minded of the Trustees bec. my work is
surely not at all up the street of those I know.85
Although Nicholsons work still inspired the same kinds of criticisms in Britain that had been
heard in the 1930s, the Tate Gallery, swayed by his success abroad, now finally acquired an
example of Nicholsons Constructivist painting. This was part of an even-handed attempt by
Rothenstein to fill some of the glaring gaps in the collection of English modernism after the
Treasury awarded the Tate acquisition funds for the first time.86 By 1955 1938 and its two
closest cognate works were out of reach, but the Tate was able to purchase directly from
Nicholson a large horizontal painting made up of squares and rectangles, June 1937, which
had been shown at the 1939 exhibition but which the artist had always retained (fig. 8).87 In
1953 Nicholson wrote to Phillip James of the Arts Council that June 1937 is a particularly
complete ptg it is in fact one of the major works of that period, & certainly one of my few
so called major works.88

It seems worthy of note that, from 1948, Nicholson had repeatedly sought to pair June 1937
with 1938 or one of its related versions in catalogues and monographs. They were also hung
together in this combination at the Venice Biennale, in the subsequent post-Biennale tour
venues and in the Tate retrospective of 1955.
American success
In Paris in October 1956 a $10,000 international painting award granted to Nicholson at the
Guggenheim Prize exhibition was decisive in sealing his success with American art
audiences.89 Charles and Kay Gimpel of Gimpel Fils, who had been his London dealers since
December 1954, had worked hard to promote Nicholsons work in the United States.
Described in 1957 as the most authoritative purveyors of the art of the avant-garde,90
Charless brother and partner, Peter Gimpel, has recalled how the gallery in the mid 1950s
did as much as ninety per cent of their business with Americans.91 It was also unique at this
time for its practice of keeping stock of its artists, in some cases by strategically buying
earlier work from collectors. Peter Gimpel has further observed that the efforts of Read and
the British Council in promoting Nicholson made a great difference to its ability to sell his
work. Every big prize was important it helped enormously.92 Nicholsons work had
reached a peak of market desirability when John Summerson decided in 1956 or early 1957
to place 1938 with the Gimpels.
On 1 February 1957 the Gimpels sold the painting to the American philanthropist and
collector of twentieth-century art Richard S. Zeisler, who was already an established admirer
of Nicholsons work.93 Only twenty-six days later, 1938 appeared on the walls of the
Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston in a landmark US exhibition of International
Constructivism, The Sphere of Mondrian. The exhibition was the brainchild of the museums
newly appointed curator, Jermayne MacAgy. Such a swift sequence of events suggests that
MacAgy and Zeisler may have planned to acquire 1938 specifically for her exhibition, and it
seems possible that the Gimpels even approached Summerson to part with the painting on
their behalf. Zeisler, who died in 2007, kept 1938 for almost fifty years before bequeathing it
to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, to provide funds for the acquisition of further
works of art. The painting was placed back on the market in 2007, following which the
Melbourne benefactors Loti and Victor Smorgon generously acquired it for the National
Gallery of Victoria. In so doing, they fulfilled a long-held ambition of the NGV to own an
outstanding example of Nicholsons Constructivist period.
As this article has shown, 1938 is much more significant in the development of Nicholsons
Constructivism than has so far been recognised in the extensive literature on this phase of the
artists work. The pictures unique historical value is based on a combination of three factors:
first, its subtle registration of Mondrians influence upon Nicholsons practice in 1938;
second, its presence at the 1939 Reid & Lefevre Gallery exhibition, which was the most
unified body of Constructivist works that Nicholson ever showed; and finally, its utilisation
by the philosophical journal Polemic to radically re-orient public perceptions of geometric
abstraction at a crucial moment after the Second World War.
This discussion began by asking whose flag was the abstract painting 1938. It was a
deliberately rhetorical question, given that Constructivism, which the painting represents,
refutes all reference to the external world and hence to a literal object such as a flag. Yet, at
the same time, flags themselves do not represent a literal world but use pure form and colour
to denote ideas of identity, place and ideology. In this sense their function is not so far

removed from one of the capacities of Constructivist art. I have argued that it was anxieties
about precisely these types of issues that complicated the reception of Nicholsons abstract
art during the politically unstable years around the Second World War. However, as has also
been shown, the abstract qualities of Ben Nicholsons 1938 are like those of a flag so
general as to render it endlessly polyvalent, subject to continual shifts of meaning and
renewal, dependent upon the historical conditions in which it was, is and may in the future be
viewed.
.
1 Herbert Read, Art in Britain 193040 Centred around Axis, Circle, Unit One,
Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1965, p. 5.
2 Jean Hlion, quoted in Maurice de Sausmarez, Ben Nicholson: A Studio International
Special, Studio International, London, p. 13.
3

Read, A nest of gentle artists, Apollo, vol. 77, no. 7, Sept. 1962, pp. 5659.

4 Harold Stanley (Jim) Ede, A Way of Life, University of Cambridge Press, Cambridge,
1984, p. 57.
5 For a recent treatment of this groups activities, see Ted Gott, Laurie Benson & Sophie
Matthiesson, Modern Britain 19001960, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2007, pp.
197206.
6 I feel we represent the most stable & least biased members of the rather difficult
collection of people who are likely to constitute a group I heard from Ben & I shall write
to him more guardedly until Barbara is decided upon! Ben is a good fellow but I do not
regard his judgement as entirely sound & I believe you agree on this. Paul Nash to Henry
Moore, 17 Jan. 1933, quoted in James King, The Last Modern: A Life of Herbert Read,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1990, p. 130.
7 His confusion would confuse the public, and Ben being so vital and energetic, would
inevitably lead to the creation of a new group, to division & back biting when unity is so
necessary and desirable. Read to Paul Nash, 23 Nov. 1934, quoted in Jeremy Lewison, Ben
Nicholson, Tate Gallery Publications, 1993, p. 48.
8

Read, A nest of gentle artists, p. 53.

9 Read, for example, accurately predicted that the lack of a critical vocabulary would mar
the reception of Nicholsons white reliefs (see Jeremy Lewison, Ben Nicholson: The Years of
Experiment 191939, Kettles Yard Gallery, Cambridge, 1983, p. 33).
10 John and Myfanwy Piper also began to do so from 1936 onwards (see Joanna GardnerHuggett, Myfanwy Evans: Axis and a voice for the British avant-garde, Womans Art
Journal, vol. 21, no. 2, Autumn 2000 Winter 2001, pp. 226, esp. p. 24). See also Brian
Foss, War Paint: Art, War, State and Identity in Britain, 19391945, Yale University Press,
New Haven, 2007, p. 186. For Moores concerns about the purely constructivist abstract
people gaining too much ground, see King, p.165.

11 They comprised the architects Wells Coates and Colin Lucas, painters John Armstrong,
Edward Burra, John Bigge, Tristram Hillier, Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson and Edward
Wadsworth, and sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
12 Read, Unit One, Architect Review, 6 Oct. 1933, reprinted in Unit One: Spirit of the
30s, Mayor Gallery, London, 1984, p. 49.
13 Have had a most lovely painting day. My last ptgs are completely white (Ben
Nicholson to Winifred Nicholson, 2 Feb. 1934, quoted in Lewison, Ben Nicholson, 1993, p.
44). The first reliefs slightly pre-date this trip, as Nicholson showed examples at the Seven
and Five Societys exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in Mar. 1934, prompting David
Gascoyne to describe Nicholson as performing the death rites of painting (David Gascoyne,
Art, New English Weekly, vol. 5, no. 3, 3 May 1934).
14 Nicholson, quoted in Sarah Checkland, Ben Nicholson: The Vicious Circles of his Life
and Art, John Murray, London, 2000, p. 119.
15 In a letter to Conrad Aiken, 31 Jan. 1935, Paul Nash wrote that Nicholson was planning
an international exhibition for the next 7 & 5 exhibition: all the most important foreign
abstract artists will be represented by their latest work. This should be rather a swell show
and very stimulating to the young idea in London (quoted in Charles Harrison, English Art
and Modernism 19001939, Allen Lane, London, 1981, p. 273, n. 28).
16

Nicholson to Jim Ede, Dec. 1934, quoted in Checkland, pp. 149, n. 36.

17

King, p. 153.

18

Quoted in Checkland, p. 148.

19 See Read, Ben Nicholson and the future of abstract painting, The Listener, 9 Oct.
1935, pp. 6045.
20

Kenneth Clark, The future of painting, The Listener, 2 Oct. 1935, pp. 5545.

21

Virginia Button, Ben Nicholson, Tate Publishing, London, 2007, p. 38.

22 John Summerson, The MARS group and the thirties, in John Bold & Edward Chaney
(eds), English Architecture Public and Private: Essays for Kerry Downes, Hambledon Press,
London, 1993, p. 305. The full name was the Modern Architecture Research Group. Formed
in the same year (1933) as Unit One, MARS was the English arm of the avant-garde Congrs
Internationaux dArchitecture Moderne.
23 Nicholson was cautiously admiring of the fact that Moore and Picasso had both joined
the party (see Margaret Gardiner, Barbara Hepworth: A Memoir, Salamander Press,
Edinburgh, 1982, pp. 501).
24

Checkland, p. 168.

25 Abstract and Concrete ran between February and June 1936 in Oxford, Liverpool,
Cambridge and, finally, London (Lefevre Gallery) and included works by Hepworth,

Nicholson, Moore, John Piper and many leading European artists such as Moholy-Nagy,
Mir, Mondrian, Gabo, Calder, and Giacometti.
26 Conversations had begun in 1935 between Nicholson, Nicolete Gray, J. L. Martin and
Herbert Read (see King, p. 178).
27 On the derisive comments occasioned in 1934 by Nicholsons and Hepworths wearing
of berets, see Checkland, p. 133.
28 Andr Breton, First Manifesto of Surrealism [1924], in Charles Harrison & Paul Wood,
Art in Theory 19001990, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992, p. 438.
29 See John Leslie Martin, Nicholson & Naum Gabo (eds), Circle: International Survey of
Constructive Art, Faber & Faber, London, 1937. Over a thousand copies were sold in Britain
and the United States in the first year. On the production of Circle, see Norbert Lynton, Ben
Nicholson, Phaidon, London, 1993, pp. 1212.
30

Checkland, p. 167.

31

Read, quoted in Checkland, p. 169.

32 Barbara Hepworth, Mondrian in London, Studio International, vol. 172, no. 884, Dec.
1966, p. 288.
33 Nicholson held Winifreds views on colour in the highest regard. Winifred pointed out
to Mondrian that You are the first person who has ever painted Yellow pure lemon
yellow like the sun. He denied it, but next time I saw him, he took up the remark. I have
thought about it he said, and it is so, but it is merely because Cadmium yellow pigment has
been invented (Winifred Nicholson, Mondrian in London, Studio International, vol. 172,
no. 884, Dec. 1966, p. 286).
34 During the 1930s Nicholson is known to have used the commercial primer Coverine as
a quick-drying substitute for gesso and the French white house paint Ripolin as a top coat on
white reliefs. In 1938 the ground layer has been freely applied in sweeping circular strokes,
the wide brush marks visible in the areas around the two circles.
35 Mondrian continued to work on New York City, New York 3 after he relocated to New
York in 1940. These transitional works later become the foundation of his last major
paintings before his death, the famous New York series of 194142. Joosten states that New
York City, New York 3 is possibly one of the two greater pictures mentioned in Mondrians
letter of 10 December 1938 to Harry Holtzman (Joop M. Joosten, Piet Mondrian: Catalogue
Raisonn, vol. II, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1998, p. 398).
36 1938 (You can be sure of Shell), poster for Shell Mex and BP Ltd, V&A Museum,
reproduced in Lynton,
p. 168.
37 See Nicholson, Notes on abstract art [Oct. 1941], Horizon, London; revised version in
Read, Introduction, Ben Nicholson, Paintings, Reliefs, Drawings, Lund Humphries,
London, 1948.

38 Geoffrey T. Hellman, The Talk of the Town, Lines and rectangles, The New Yorker, 1
Mar. 1941, p. 7.
39 Piet Mondrian to Nicholson, 13 Sept. 1940, quoted in Sophie Bowness, Mondrian in
London: Letters to Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, The Burlington Magazine, vol.
132, no. 1052, Nov. 1990, pp. 7828.
40 Mondrian initially placed Composition en rouge, bleu et blanc: II, 1937 (now in Muse
dArt Moderne, Paris), on consignment with Nicholson and later gave it to him (see Sophie
Bowness, p. 785, n. 6).
41

Nicholson, quoted in Sausmarez, p. 7.

42 Sir Alan Bowness has deduced that the painting is most likely no. 8 in the catalogue,
from the evidence of the prices in relation to dimensions 70 guineas according to Lefevres
archive (email correspondence with the writer, 15 Sept. 2008).
43 I have considered the frame which surrounds a work of mine as a vital part of its
presentation. Therefore, I have always seen to the framing of my work myself Frames
should be made of natural wood with little graining and of a colour which is not too hot, nor
too yellow, and which is not stained or varnished. The corners of the frame should not be
mitred diagonally. The four sides should abutt [sic] each other, aligned so that the top side
extends over the left side vertical and that the right-side vertical rises so as to extend over the
side of the top lateral. Similarly, the left-side vertical is to extend across the end of the bottom
lateral while the bottom lateral is to extend across the end of the right-side vertical. Ben
Nicholson to Tate Gallery, 28 June 1979, quoted in Stephen Hackney, Rica Jones & Joyce
Townsend (eds), Paint and Purpose: A Study of Technique in British Art, Tate Gallery
Publishing, London, 1999, p. 162.
44 In a diary entry of October 1932, Cecil Stephenson wrote that he was making large
track for pictures for Ben Nicholson (see Checkland, p. 107, n. 49). In February 1939 Sybil
left Stephenson for E. L. T. Mesens, publisher of Nicholsons catalogue for the Reid &
Lefevre Gallery exhibition, Mar. 1939. On Sybil Stephenson, see Lewison, Ben Nicholson,
1993, p. 52, n. 33; Checkland, p.178.
45 The organisers intention to target an elite audience is reflected by their decision to
publish the catalogue in the London Bulletin, the short-lived modern art journal edited by the
Belgian Surrealist dealer, E. L. T. Mesens (see n. 45).
46 Nicholsons long and fruitful association with the architect J. L. Martin has been
recently explored by Alice Strang, Circle of friends: Ben Nicholson and Leslie Martin
(unpublished paper), Ben Nicholson conference, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 1819
May 2007.
47 The painting possibly cost 70 guineas (see n. 43). It is not yet known whether
Summerson purchased the painting or whether it was a gift or even an in kind payment for
the Listener review.
48

John Summerson, Abstract painters, The Listener, 16 Mar. 1939, pp. 574.

49 Read, The development of Ben Nicholson, London Bulletin, no. 11, Mar. 1939, p. 9.
See also T. McGreevy, London Round-up, London Studio, vol. CXVII, no. 553, Apr. 1939, p.
224.
50 See Nicholson to Read, c.Apr. 1939, in King, p. 326, n. 26 & pp.17885. The collection
was to be made up of loans and donations; however, Guggenheim abandoned the scheme at
an early stage.
51

See Checkland, p. 179.

52 McNeill Reid to Nicholson, 18 Mar. 1940, quoted in Button, The war years, in
Lewison, Ben Nicholson, 1993, p. 97, n. 21.
53

Clark, The future of painting, p. 544.

54 Clark (ed.), Preface, Roger Fry: Last Lectures, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1939, p. vi.
55

Clark, quoted in Checkland, p. 189.

56

Geoffrey Grigson, The death of abstract art, The Listener, 12 Sept. 1940, p. 373.

57 See Duncan MacDonald to Nicholson, 28 Mar. 1944, in Button, The war years,
in Lewison, Ben Nicholson, 1993, pp. 589.
58 Six works by Nicholson were included in the exhibition New Movements in Art.
Contemporary Work in England: An Exhibition of Recent Painting and Sculpture at the
London Museum, Mar.May 1942.
59 Philip Hendy, Introduction, Paintings by Ben Nicholson, Temple Newsam, Leeds,
1944.
60 John Rothenstein, Modern English Painters, vol. II, Lewis to Moore, Macdonald,
London, 1956, p. 261.
61 Robin Ironside, Painting since 1939, Longmans, Green, London, 1947, quoted in Foss,
pp. 1878.
62 The extent of detail in Summersons report suggests that he himself may have been
present at the installation of the exhibition (see Button, The war years, in Lewison, Ben
Nicholson, 1993, p. 57, n. 14).
63 Paintings by Ben Nicholson: Exhibition at Temple Newsam, Leeds, The Times, 14
Sept. 1944, p. 6.
64 Stefan Collini, Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
2006, p. 396.
65 Humphrey Slater, A note on the importance of Ben Nicholson, Polemic, no. 2, 1946,
pp. 4951.

66 Nicholson attributed the critical reviews of his 1944 Temple Newsam retrospective to
the unavailability of colour reproductions of his Constructivist works (see Button, The war
years, in Lewison, Ben Nicholson, 1993, p. 67).
67

ibid., p. 62, n. 34.

68

Stefan Themerson, Circles and cats, Polemic, no. 4, JulyAug. 1946, p. 36.

69 Button, Spreading the word, in Lewison, Ben Nicholson, 1993, p. 68. According to
Button, Nicholson particularly admired Barrs diagram.
70

Collini, p. 396.

71

Nicholson, Notes on abstract art, p. 272.

72

See Button, The war years, in Lewison, Ben Nicholson, 1993, p. 62.

73

Nicholson to E. H. Ramsden, 1944, quoted in Button, ibid.

74

Nicholson to George L. K. Morris, 19 Mar. 1949, quoted in Button, ibid., n. 36.

75 Read, Ben Nicholson: Paintings, Reliefs, Drawings, Lund Humphries, London, 1948,
cat. 75. According to Norbert Lynton, Read had to place pressure on Clark before he would
agree in 1943 to a Penguin monograph on Nicholson. Problems with paper supplies and
colour blocks further delayed its production (see Lynton, p. 221, n. 13).
76

Summerson, 1948, p. 12. This series cost 2/6d or the equivalent of 12 pence.

77 Patrick Heron, conversation with Jeremy Lewison, 8 Mar. 1993, quoted in Lewison,
Ben Nicholson, 1993, p. 71, n. 23.
78

Read, Ben Nicholson, pp. 17, 20.

79 At least two closely related works from this year, also entitled 1938, were in private
collections in the 1940s: 1938 (Painting version I), later owned by Mrs Neville Burston,
and 1938 (Painting version II) owned by Alexander Calder.
80 Museum of Modern Art, Department of Painting and Sculpture: Ben Nicholson, Painted
Relief, 1939, Collection file [artists questionnaire].
81 Curiously, Nicholsons explanation of the Burston painting has been accepted without
scepticism. See, for example, Lewison, Ben Nicholson, 1993, p. 222, cat. no. 71.
82 Margaret Garlake, New Art New World: British Art in Postwar Society, Yale University
Press / Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, New Haven, 1998, p. 17.
83 Exhibition of Works by Nicholson, Bacon, Freud, XXVII Biennale, Venice, British
Council, 1954, cat. no. 11. Nicholson received the Ulisse acquisition prize.

84 Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Muse National dArt Moderne (Paris), Palais des
Beaux-Arts (Brussels) and Kunsthaus (Zrich).
85 Nicholson to Patrick Heron, 22 Jan. 1954, quoted in Lewison, Ben Nicholson, 1993, p.
76, n. 29.
86

See Garlake, p. 14.

87 June 1937 (painting) had remained unsold after the 1939 Reid & Lefevre exhibition. It
was stored in The Mall studio until the Blitz, when it was relocated to a garage in Cornwall.
The Tate also acquired a 1935 relief in this year, assisted by the Contemporary Art Society.
88 Nicholson to Philip James, after 20 Nov. 1953, p. 52, quoted in Lewison, Ben
Nicholson, 1993, cat. no. 69, p. 221.
89 It was awarded for August 1956 (Val dOrcia). See $10,000 for Ben Nicholson,
Manchester Guardian, 30 Nov. 1956.
90

Basil Taylor, In the bazaar, Spectator, 16 Aug. 1957, p. 231.

91

See Lewison, Ben Nicholson, p. 83.

92 Peter Gimpel, conversation with Jeremy Lewison, 23 Mar. 1993, quoted in Lewison,
Ben Nicholson, p. 83.
93 Other works by Nicholson in Zeislers collection included 1933 (Coin and musical
instruments) and Untitled, 1950, later gifted to the Columbia Museum