water | abstract art | Cubist | harbour | buildings | houses | boat | landscape
Associated Places:
Europe | United Kingdom | England | Cornwall | Saint Ives
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
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)
Publications:
Sylviane Gold, In the Abstract, a Coastal Scene Materializes, A Review of 'Art in Focus: St. Ives Abstraction’ at Yale Center for British Art , New York Times, New York, July 14, 2013, metropolitan Section, p. 9, Yale Internet ResourceMatthew Hargraves, "Yale Center for British Art joins Art UK", ArtUK, 24 June 2019, https://artuk.org/discover/stories/yale-center-for-british-art-joins-art-ukNorbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, Phaidon, London, 1993, p. 229, pl. 213, NJ18 N51 L95 1993 (YCBA)Jovan Nicholson, Kate Nicholson, Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd, London, p. 14, NJ18.N514 N53 2019 (LC) Oversize (YCBA)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)St Ives abstraction, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2013, cover, p. 21, V 2475 (YCBA)The Artist's Notebook, Artist, 40, December 1950, p. 96, Not available at Yale
Gallery Label:
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)
Provenance:
Created by Ben Nicholson (1894–1982), the artist; ...; acquired by Robert Donald Seaburne May (1923–1982), Berkshire, England by 1952 [1][a]; ...; purchased by Aimée Ethel Goldberg (née Bertish) (1922–1986) and Philip Jonas Goldberg (1899–1969), London, England, at Leicester Galleries, in London, England, October 1962 [2][b][c]; purchased at auction by John Baskett, London, England at Christie, Manson & Woods, in London, England, December 2, 1986 (lot 152, ‘St. Ives Harbour’), in "Impressionist and Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, The Property of the late Mrs. A.E. Goldberg" for Paul Mellon [d]; by whom given to the Yale Center for British Art, 2006. Citations: --- [1] Robert Donald Seaburne May, often referred to as R.D.S. May in exhibition catalogues, was a prolific London-based collector of modern art. He lent the painting to the Arts Council of Great Britain’s 1952 exhibition "Three Young Collectors" (no. 21, ‘St Ives Harbour’). In this exhibition, May’s collection of modern art was featured alongside the collections of Robert Banks and Peter Meyer. [2] Aimée Ethel Goldberg (née Bertish) and Philip Jonas Goldberg were London-based modern art collectors. From April 15 to May 17, 1964, the couple lent this painting (no. 35, ‘St. Ives Harbour (1949)’) to the Dallas Museum of Fine Art’s Ben Nicholson exhibition. Notes: --- [a] Arts Council of Great Britain, Three Young Collectors (Shenval Press, 1952), 5. [b] Christie, Manson & Woods, Impressionist and Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, The Property of the late Mrs. A.E. Goldberg (Christie, Manson & Woods, 1986), 89. [c] Jerry Bywaters, Ben Nicholson: April 15–May 17, 1964 (Dallas Museum of Fine Art, 1964), 10. https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth183449/. [d] Christie, Manson & Woods, Impressionist and Modern British Paintings, 89.