Over the weekend I had been cataloging some pictures on Pinterest. For a visual person this site can be quite addictive. Why is almost as bad as a drag queen in a house of wiggery with no budget!!! After a few clicks I somehow came across the paintings of Winifred Nicholson who was a British painter. I fell in love immediately with the color and simplicity of the paintings. After viewing her works, I found out a little about her. She was married to the painter Ben Nicholson, and that made her the daughter-in-law of the painter William Nicholson and his wife, the painter Mabel Pryde. Winifred Nicholson was considered a colourist who developed a personal impressionistic style, concentrating on domestic still life objects and landscapes. She often combined the two subjects as seen in her painting From Bedroom Window, Bankshead showing a landscape viewed through a window, with flowers in a vase in the foreground. She painted prolifically throughout her life, largely at home but also on trips to Italy, Greece and Scotland, among other places. Many of her works are still in private collections, but a number are I understand in the Kettle's Yard art gallery in Cambridge. One painting is believed to have hung at 10 Downing Street. She had a lifelong fascination for rainbow and spectrum colors and in the 1970s she made particularly strong, innovative use of such colors in many of her paintings. She left some written accounts of her thoughts on color. I would gladly hang one of her works in the Casa. Here were some of my favorites.
I also came across a book for purchase...something to think about.
This new publication explores the whole career of Winifred Nicholson with a special emphasis on her theories of color. Using specific paintings to examine her ideas and writings about color the book includes her late ‘prismatic’ pictures and illustrates many previously unseen paintings from private collections, as well as some of Nicholson’s best known works, and draws on new research, including previously unseen archival material.
