Ben Nicholson
Carved white reliefs in the 1930s and spent fifty years arranging jugs, hills and rectangles.
Ben Nicholson was born in Buckinghamshire in 1894, son of the painter William Nicholson, and after a visit to Mondrian's Paris studio in 1934 made the white reliefs — shallow rectangles and circles carved into painted board, the most rigorous abstract works produced in Britain between the wars. He was married to Winifred Nicholson and then to Barbara Hepworth, moved with the latter to St Ives in 1939, and the still lifes and landscape-derived abstractions of the following decades combine a table of jugs with the shape of a Cornish hill. He was awarded the Order of Merit and died in 1982.
The 1930s white reliefs are the top of the market and are scarce; carved board is structurally vulnerable at the edges and the white surfaces discolour, so condition weighs heavily. The post-war still lifes and abstract compositions form the main body of available work. Nicholson also made many drawings and prints, including etchings of Italian and Greek subjects from the 1960s, which are plentiful and modestly valued. Works are usually signed, titled and dated on the reverse. Forgeries of the drawings exist and require care.
If you own a work by Ben Nicholson
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.