At the same time that Ben Nicholson was producing some of his most acclaimed and recognisable paintings in 1937, such as 1937 (painting) (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh) and 1937, June (painting) (Tate Gallery, London) he embarked on a deeply personal project inspired by the love for his three children with fellow artist, Winifred Nicholson. A series of paintings were produced which were intended to illustrate a children’s book, hence their childlike innocence and playfulness. Sadly, the scheme was never realised as the publishers Routledge pulled out.
‘It was not only the childlike vision that inclined Nicholson towards the consciously naive (a stylistic trait that recurs throughout his work, right up to his latest drawings). There was, outside himself, a historical influence too – the subjective revolution in art which, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, had increasingly forced every serious artist to question first principles, to become a child, a primitive, and slowly create his own language. This in turn was part of a larger reaction against the weight of tradition and the complexities of European civilisation in favour of an invigorating mixture of the primitive, the exotic and the childlike’. (P. Khoroche, Ben Nicholson, Drawings and Painted Reliefs, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2002, pp. 21-22)
This unique group of works by Ben Nicholson were often acquired by those very close to him. Cyril S. Reddihough for instance, one of Ben Nicholson’s earliest and most significant patrons, acquired the delightful George and Rufus, oil on board. Alastair Morton, the artist’s Scottish friend in Cumberland acquired another. The George and Rufus which Osborne Samuel is presenting is even more personal in nature, evidenced by the hand written inscription by the artist on the backboard, ‘for Kate with much love from Ben, Xmas 1937’. Kate was the second of three children Ben had with his first wife Winifred Nicholson. Born in 1929 she would have been eight years old upon receiving this dedicated festive gift, making it an exceptionally poignant painting which is appearing for sale for possibly its first ever time.
Ben Nicholson’s son, Jake, explains, ‘Dogs were called Booboo or Ponto, and horses seem to be George, or if they were roan coloured, Rufus, and they tended to be skittish. There was also a stag called Johnny and even a crocodile called Billy.’
The aforementioned Alastair Morton took the reigns of Edinburgh Weavers in 1931, having been founded by his family in 1928. A nursery fabric using several of Ben Nicholson’s illustrative paintings was finally realised by Edinburgh Weavers in 1978, an example of which is now in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. The V&A fabric closely resembles Osborne Samuel’s George and Rufus. The landscape in the background of both seemingly depicting St Nicholas Chapel on ‘The Island’ in St Ives, Cornwall; not strictly an island but more a grassy peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The harbour walls of St Ives are positioned to its right.
The significance of this much loved series is that they reignited Ben Nicholson’s passion for landscape. After moving permanently to St Ives at the outbreak of war in 1939 with his second wife, Barbara Hepworth, Nicholson learnt one of his paintings back in London had sold for 42 guineas. The work in question was one from his George and Rufus series and inspired him to further explore his local landscape.
