Christopher Dawson
Head of Department
Lot 43AR
Winifred Nicholson(British, 1893-1981)February 57.8 x 60.5 cm. (22 3/4 x 23 3/4 in.)
29 September 2021, 15:00 BST
London, New Bond Street£20,000 - £30,000
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Winifred Nicholson (British, 1893-1981)
February
oil, crayon and silver spray paint on board
57.8 x 60.5 cm. (22 3/4 x 23 3/4 in.)
oil, crayon and silver spray paint on board
57.8 x 60.5 cm. (22 3/4 x 23 3/4 in.)
Footnotes
Provenance
Purchased by the present owner from the Kettle's Yard exhibition
Private Collection, U.K.
Exhibited
Cambridge, Kettle's Yard, Pictures by Winifred Nicholson, 21 November–16 December, 1972, no. 16
'It is because she is a woman that she has so deep a knowledge of growth - the life and nature of plants and of landscape...She paints a pot of flowers and in it you feel the laws of universal birth'.
(Jim Ede quoted in an early unpublished draft of A Way of Life, cited in Winifred Nicholson: Music of Colour, Cambridge, Kettle's Yard, 2012)
Winifred Nicholson often grew bulbs in the early spring, particularly hyacinths (see for example Candlemas I, sold in these rooms 1st July 2020, lot 41), cyclamens, or as in this picture Alpine narcissi. Winifred enjoyed the expectation of spring about to arrive, writing, 'I like promise of things to come. There always turns out such unexpected and exciting things in the colourlessness of the unknown future'. February with its brightly coloured curtains and the narcissi with their unfurling buds expresses Winifred's innate cheerfulness.
We are grateful to Jovan Nicholson for compiling this catalogue entry.
