Description:
abstract
Label Text:
Like many of Ben Nicholson's paintings, "Still Life (West Penwith)" combines still-life, landscape and geometric abstraction. It depicts goblets, mugs, and a vase arranged in a Cubist-style still-life before an open window. As the title conveys, the window offers a view of West Penwith, a coastal village in Cornwall, England. Nicholson represents the architectural structures of the village with angular lines and planes, while the ocean is evoked through a patch of pale blue paint in the upper center of the canvas. He emphasized texture in this painting by allowing the canvas to show through and by combining graphite and oil paint. The muted white frame is Nicholson's own design. Nicholson credited his father, the eminent Edwardian painter Sir William Nicholson, with developing his appreciation of still-life. With his second wife, sculptor Barbara Hepworth, Nicholson was a leading figure in the artists' colony that developed in St. Ives, Cornwall, after the outbreak of World War II.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1955.15 |
