Winifred Nicholson 1893-1981

Born in Oxford, she is probably best known for her flower paintings, but she also executed many landscapes and during the 1930s some abstracts. She studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art and exhibited at the RA as early as 1914. Travel and study in Paris. Lugano and India was important to her. She married Ben Nicholson in 1920, subsequently exhibiting with him at the Paterson Gallery in 1933, with the Seven and Five Socirty, at the Leicester, Lefevre, and Crane Kalman Galleries. Flower pieces before a window, with landscape elements from Cumberland, Cornwall and the South of France were characteristic of the 1920s, and abstracts using an elipse shape were executed during the 1930s; she considered colour to be all important, aiming for clear vibrancy of hue. She was on friendly terms with helion, Mondrian and Hartung. In 1931 she separated from Ben Nicholson and lived until 1938 in paris; subsequently she lived in Cumberland. She sometimes used the surname 'Dacre'. Her work is in the Tate Gallery, and in many other national and international collections. LIT: Unknown Colour: Paintings, Letters and Writings by Winifred Nicholson , Winifred Nicholson, Faber, 1987 Winifred Nicholson , Judith Collins, retrospective exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, 1987

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