Ben Nicholson

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Not to be confused with the 20th-century British art historian Benedict Nicolson.

Ben Nicholson
Portrait of Ben Nicholson by Mabel Pryde, circa 1910–1914
Born
Benjamin Lauder Nicholson

(1894-04-10)10 April 1894
Eight Bells, Denham, Buckinghamshire, England
Died6 February 1982(1982-02-06) (aged 87)
Hampstead, London, England
EducationThe Slade
Known forPainting
Movementabstract art
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1920; div. 1938)​
​
​
(m. 1938; div. 1951)​
Felicitas Vogler
​
​
(m. 1957; div. 1977)​
Children6, including Kate and Simon
Parents
Relatives
AwardsOM
1934 (relief), Tate Modern, London

Benjamin Lauder Nicholson, OM (10 April 1894 – 6 February 1982) was an English painter of abstract compositions (sometimes in low relief), landscapes, and still-life. He was one of the leading promoters of abstract art in England.[1]

Background and training

Nicholson was born on 10 April 1894 in

Christopher Nicholson and to Anthony Nicholson. His maternal grandmother Barbara Pryde (née Lauder) was a niece of the famous artist brothers Robert Scott Lauder and James Eckford Lauder. The family moved to London in 1896. Nicholson was educated at Tyttenhangar Lodge Preparatory School, Seaford, at Heddon Court, Hampstead and then as a boarder at Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk. He trained as an artist in London at the Slade School of Fine Art between 1910 and 1911, where he was a contemporary of Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, and Edward Wadsworth. According to Nash, with whom he formed a close friendship, Nicholson spent more time during his year at the Slade playing billiards than painting or drawing, since the abstract formality of the green baize and the constantly changing relationships of the balls were, he later claimed, of more appeal to his aesthetic sense.[2]

Nicholson was married three times. His first marriage was to the painter Winifred Roberts; it took place on 5 November 1920 at St Martin-in-the-Fields Church, London. Nicholson and Winifred had three children: a son, Jake, in June 1927; a daughter, Kate (who later also became a painter), in July 1929; and a son, Andrew, in September 1931. They were divorced in 1938. His second marriage was to fellow artist Barbara Hepworth on 17 November 1938 at Hampstead Register Office. Nicholson and Hepworth had triplets, two daughters, Sarah and Rachel, and a son, Simon, in 1934. They were divorced in 1951. The third and final marriage was to Felicitas Vogler, a German photographer. They married in July 1957 and divorced in 1977.

Life and works

English Heritage blue plaque at 2B Pilgrims Lane, Hampstead

Nicholson's first notable work was following a meeting with the playwright

Peter Pan
; his father William designed some of the sets and costumes.

Nicholson was exempted from World War I military service due to asthma. He travelled to New York in 1917 for an operation on his tonsils, then visited other American cities, returning to Britain in 1918. Before he returned, Nicholson's mother died in July of influenza and his brother Anthony Nicholson was killed in action.

From 1920 to 1933, he was married to the painter Winifred Nicholson and lived in London. After Nicholson's first exhibition of figurative works in London in 1922, his work began to be influenced by Synthetic Cubism, and later by the primitive style of Rousseau. In 1926, he became chair of the Seven and Five Society.

In London, Nicholson met the sculptors

St Ives Society of Artists
. In 1951 he and Barbara Hepworth divorced.

He won the prestigious

Sao Paulo Art Biennial.[4]

Nicholson married the photographer Felicitas Vogler in 1957 and moved to Castagnola, Switzerland, in 1958. In 1968, he received the British Order of Merit (OM). In 1971, he separated from Vogler and moved to Cambridge. In 1977, they divorced.

Nicholson's last home was in Pilgrim's Lane, Hampstead. He died there on 6 February 1982 and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 12 February 1982.[5]

Art market

The highest price reached by one of his paintings in the art market was when April 57 (Arbia 2) (1957) sold by £3,749,000 (c. $4,659,407) at Christie's London, on 23 November 2016.[6][7]

Public collections

Some of Nicholson's works can be seen at the Tate Gallery, Tate St Ives, Kettle's Yard Art Gallery in Cambridge, The Hepworth Wakefield, Pallant House Gallery in Chichester and the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ben Nicholson.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Ben Nicholson.
  1. ^ Ben Nicholson, Encyclopedia Britannica
  2. ^ David Boyd Haycock, A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War (2009), p.73.
  3. ^ Smith, Kirstie (3 September 2015). "Row over home of artist Ben Nicholson". The Cornishman. p. 7.
  4. ^ "Ben Nicholson OM 1894–1982". Tate Gallery. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  5. ^ Sophie Bowness, Nicholson, Benjamin Lauder (1894–1982) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, May 2010. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31498. Retrieved 15 April 2013.
  6. ^ Ben Nicholson: master of ‘clarity and the great art of omission’, Christie's, 2 October 2023
  7. ^ Christie's, 23 November 2016

Further reading

External links
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