Dating from circa 1940, this work belongs closely to the small group of landscapes Nicholson made following his move to St Ives at the outbreak of the Second World War. Modest in scale and deliberately playful in character, these works marked Nicholson's renewed engagement with landscape. The origins of this distinctive visual language can be traced in part to Nicholson's 'George and Rufus' paintings of 1937.

Their apparent innocence was far from accidental. Peter Khoroche has described Nicholson's attraction to 'the consciously naive' relating to ...




made for Nicholson's close friend and collaborator Alastair Morton, the pioneering director of Edinburgh Weavers.


Morton had worked closely with Nicholson during the 1930s, commissioning designs from as part of his ambitious programme of bringing modern art into textile production. This work's simplified buildings, harbour and diminutive boat recall the visual language that Nicholson had developed in his 'George and Rufus' illustrations of the late 1930s, originally conceived for an unrealised children's book and later made intoa a fabric by Morton (see L. Jackson, Alistair Morton and Edinburgh Weavers; Visionary Textiles and Modern Art, London, 2012, pp. 90-91). Morton was also the owner of one of Nicholson's original George and Rufus illustrations of 1938, acquired directly from Nicholson.




belongs to a particularly playful and personal strand of Ben Nicholson's work. These works have a deliberately naive, almost childlike quality. Morton was director of Edinburgh Weavers,

In style, it resembles BN's George and Rufus paintings and designs, which I think must be reproduced in that book - he started these in 1937/8 but he continued to make small works in the same style (St Ives scenes) into 1940. The cat is not a character I've come across in them - I think they did have two cats (Foxy and Frankie?) but I'm never sure exactly when. I was with Sarah today, but will try to remember to ask her when we next speak.