New Limited Edition Art Prints
This year promises to be one full of changes and many new prints on offer. The first of these are prints by two artists, Winifred Nicholson and Alfred Wallis. As always there are connections between these and our existing artists (Ravilious/Bawden/Nash etc), both in biographical terms – they knew each other, but also to a certain extent in their artistic influences – particularly Wallis on Winifred Nicholson.
Winifred Nicholson – Penstemons. Limited Edition (1/500). (RRP) £190.00
Winifred Nicholson – Cineraria & Cyclamen. Limited Edition (1/500). (RRP) £190.00
Nicholson first exhibited these works (above) in April 1927, in a shared exhibition with Ben Nicholson, Christopher Wood and the potter William Staite Murray at the Beaux Arts Gallery. An anonymous Times reviewer wrote of the exhibition: ‘Mrs. Nicholson is the only one of the three painters who strikes one as being perfectly ingenuous…….there is an April spirit in her work….In her flower paintings the escape from realism into a new reality, as lovely as that of Nature and charged with human feeling, is complete.
Alfred Wallis – Three Sailing Boats in a Line. Limited Edition (1/750). Price £130.00
Oil on paper. There is a spare beauty to this print. These are small luggers of a kind Wallis knew well. After his journeys crossing the Atlantic on larger brigantines and schooners Wallis found employment on these inshore fishermen’s boats. They sailed from Mounts Bay in Cornwall in search of seasonal staples – mackerel in the summer, and pilchards and herring in the winter.
Alfred Wallis – Lighthouse with Trawler and Fish. Limited Edition (1/750). Price £145.00
Oil on board. This print contains many of the aspects for which Wallis is now famous: a lighthouse, a fishing boat, the hint of a pier and – central in importance – the fish. Wallis gave disproportionate sizes to the things in his paintings he found most interesting. Here the fish are most important. Wallis once remarked to a critic writing about his paintings that when he worked as a fisherman on the luggers sailing from Mounts Bay, ‘each boat of the fleet had a soul, a beautiful soul shaped like a fish’. (Albert Rowe, The Boy and the Painter, Studio International, 1968; p29)
About Winifred Nicholson and Alfred Wallis
Winifred Nicholson was the first wife of Ben Nicholson, the renowned British artist best known as a pioneer of abstract art and son of William Nicholson, the creator of the Velveteen Rabbit images we already publish (see Prints – William Nicholson). The two prints we offer by Winifred Nicholson are representative of her work: she painted flowers on a ledge or windowsill; but hers are more than simple flower depictions – she captured, in terms of content, something quintessential, but colour, luminosity and the play of light also characterize her work and in this, too, these prints are representative.
Winifred Nicholson knew Alfred Wallis – the second artist whose work we now publish. The two met in St. Ives, Cornwall, where she, Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood went on holiday and to work in the 1930’s. Winifred was fascinated by Wallis’s direct or ‘primitive’ approach, and indeed he influenced her, not only by this approach, but also in terms of content – she collected his boat paintings and depicted a Wallis drawing in one of hers (Autumn Flowers on Mantelpiece, c 1932).
Regular customers will know that we now sell all of our prints bespoke framed. (See About Us on the site). This has been very successful and, of course, you can also purchase the new Winifred Nicholson and Alfred Wallis prints framed.
As always Trade Enquiries are welcome – see also About Us on the site for more on these.
We’ll be adding many more images as the year progresses, so please do keep visiting.