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拍品專文
Painted in 1953, Sept 29-53 (Fiesole) belongs to a pivotal moment in Ben Nicholson’s career when the formal language he had refined in St Ives encountered the luminous light and ordered expanses of the Italian landscape. In August 1939, with war imminent, Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth had moved to St Ives, where the drama of the sea and shape of distant headlands profoundly shaped his abstraction throughout the 1940s. By the early 1950s, however, a new clarity seemed to enter his work. His visits to Italy – and in particular to Fiesole, a scenic, historic town overlooking Florence – introduced a Mediterranean brilliance that subtly but decisively altered his palette and spatial sensibility.
Flying over Florence and Brindisi in the mid-1960s, Sir Leslie Martin noted down his thoughts on Nicholson’s almost symphonic structure of shape and light: “Nicholson’s background is European. His work is linked in some indefinite way to the Italian primitives … The background comes through, but just so that it is not too pompous … And after making adequate allowances for the light … the painting would still possess that special and unique quality that characterises his work” (M. de Sausmarez (ed.), Ben Nicholson: A Studio International Special, London, 1969, p. 27).
Such a link between Nicholson and the “Italian primitives” is not direct but speaks to a shared artistic sensibility: clarity of design, balanced proportions and a luminous, essentially architectural use of colour and shape. As Martin notes, this European background “comes through, but just so that it is not too pompous”; the influence is present yet restrained, absorbed into Nicholson’s modern language rather than imitated. Even allowing for the effects of Mediterranean light, the painting retains “that special and unique quality”.
In Sept 29-53 (Fiesole), these qualities coalesce: the hillside and sky are translated into a calm, ordered arrangement of rectangles, triangles and curved forms, evoking the stratified Tuscan landscape while remaining firmly abstract. Light filters through the composition, creating depth through tonal gradation rather than strict perspectival boundaries. In the Altarpiece of Santa Lucia dei Magnoli by Domenico Veneziano there is a similar emphasis on layered light and assembled curves in constructing a sense of space, though Nicholson distils this into a more reduced, abstract form.
Nicholson’s paintings of the early to mid-1950s form a distinct group in which landscape no longer partners the still life as it had in the previous decade. Jeremy Lewison has observed that at this moment Nicholson “returned to a lateral spread of objects which somewhat dissipates the object quality of the motifs while at the same time setting up greater rhythmic variety and visual rhymes.” (J. Lewison, Ben Nicholson, Oxford, 1991, p. 20). Although written of still life, this description applies with particular force to Sept 29-53 (Fiesole). Here, natural forms are dispersed across the surface, generating rhythm rather than description. As such, space unfolds laterally, guided by colour relationships rather than straightforward perspectival depth, akin to what Veneziano achieves in Altarpiece of Santa Lucia dei Magnoli.
The composition is defined by a luminous sweep of greys, blues and greens, articulated through subtle gradients that shift from cool translucency to saturated intensity. These tonal modulations create an atmospheric field that feels expansive yet controlled. A single block of red punctuates the cooler harmonies, acting as both anchor and counterpoint. This red accent does not demand narrative pre-eminence, but instead stabilises the composition, establishing what Lewison terms “visual rhymes” across the canvas. Colour here is structural: architectural rather than decorative.
There are distant echoes in the present work to the synthetic cubism Nicholson had first encountered in Paris in 1920, particularly in the way planes interlock and hover between depth and surface. Yet the mood of Sept 29-53 (Fiesole) is far removed from the muted restraint of earlier decades. Where many of his 1940s works employed pale, chalky tones, the Italian paintings embrace radiance.
By 1953, Nicholson was entering a period of growing international recognition, soon to be marked by major exhibitions and awards (the Ulisse Prize, awarded at the 1954 Venice Biennale, for instance, or his major retrospective exhibition at Tate in 1955). Sept 29-53 (Fiesole), however, is less a declaration of success than a statement of assurance. It reveals an artist fully in command of his means, translating his experience of place into a disciplined abstraction. The result is a painting both radiant and restrained: Tuscany reimagined with clarity as measured visual music.
Sept 29-53 (Fiesole)’s inclusion in the collection of Baron Joseph-Berthold (Bertie) Urvater and his wife Gaëtane-Gilberte (Gigi) Consiglio further underscores the painting’s significance. As prominent Belgian collectors whose holdings encompassed leading figures of international abstraction and Surrealism – and who maintained close personal relationships with many of the artists they championed – the Urvaters played a hugely important role in shaping post-war European collecting, situating Sept 29-53 (Fiesole) within a context of internationally engaged patronage.
Flying over Florence and Brindisi in the mid-1960s, Sir Leslie Martin noted down his thoughts on Nicholson’s almost symphonic structure of shape and light: “Nicholson’s background is European. His work is linked in some indefinite way to the Italian primitives … The background comes through, but just so that it is not too pompous … And after making adequate allowances for the light … the painting would still possess that special and unique quality that characterises his work” (M. de Sausmarez (ed.), Ben Nicholson: A Studio International Special, London, 1969, p. 27).
Such a link between Nicholson and the “Italian primitives” is not direct but speaks to a shared artistic sensibility: clarity of design, balanced proportions and a luminous, essentially architectural use of colour and shape. As Martin notes, this European background “comes through, but just so that it is not too pompous”; the influence is present yet restrained, absorbed into Nicholson’s modern language rather than imitated. Even allowing for the effects of Mediterranean light, the painting retains “that special and unique quality”.
In Sept 29-53 (Fiesole), these qualities coalesce: the hillside and sky are translated into a calm, ordered arrangement of rectangles, triangles and curved forms, evoking the stratified Tuscan landscape while remaining firmly abstract. Light filters through the composition, creating depth through tonal gradation rather than strict perspectival boundaries. In the Altarpiece of Santa Lucia dei Magnoli by Domenico Veneziano there is a similar emphasis on layered light and assembled curves in constructing a sense of space, though Nicholson distils this into a more reduced, abstract form.
Nicholson’s paintings of the early to mid-1950s form a distinct group in which landscape no longer partners the still life as it had in the previous decade. Jeremy Lewison has observed that at this moment Nicholson “returned to a lateral spread of objects which somewhat dissipates the object quality of the motifs while at the same time setting up greater rhythmic variety and visual rhymes.” (J. Lewison, Ben Nicholson, Oxford, 1991, p. 20). Although written of still life, this description applies with particular force to Sept 29-53 (Fiesole). Here, natural forms are dispersed across the surface, generating rhythm rather than description. As such, space unfolds laterally, guided by colour relationships rather than straightforward perspectival depth, akin to what Veneziano achieves in Altarpiece of Santa Lucia dei Magnoli.
The composition is defined by a luminous sweep of greys, blues and greens, articulated through subtle gradients that shift from cool translucency to saturated intensity. These tonal modulations create an atmospheric field that feels expansive yet controlled. A single block of red punctuates the cooler harmonies, acting as both anchor and counterpoint. This red accent does not demand narrative pre-eminence, but instead stabilises the composition, establishing what Lewison terms “visual rhymes” across the canvas. Colour here is structural: architectural rather than decorative.
There are distant echoes in the present work to the synthetic cubism Nicholson had first encountered in Paris in 1920, particularly in the way planes interlock and hover between depth and surface. Yet the mood of Sept 29-53 (Fiesole) is far removed from the muted restraint of earlier decades. Where many of his 1940s works employed pale, chalky tones, the Italian paintings embrace radiance.
By 1953, Nicholson was entering a period of growing international recognition, soon to be marked by major exhibitions and awards (the Ulisse Prize, awarded at the 1954 Venice Biennale, for instance, or his major retrospective exhibition at Tate in 1955). Sept 29-53 (Fiesole), however, is less a declaration of success than a statement of assurance. It reveals an artist fully in command of his means, translating his experience of place into a disciplined abstraction. The result is a painting both radiant and restrained: Tuscany reimagined with clarity as measured visual music.
Sept 29-53 (Fiesole)’s inclusion in the collection of Baron Joseph-Berthold (Bertie) Urvater and his wife Gaëtane-Gilberte (Gigi) Consiglio further underscores the painting’s significance. As prominent Belgian collectors whose holdings encompassed leading figures of international abstraction and Surrealism – and who maintained close personal relationships with many of the artists they championed – the Urvaters played a hugely important role in shaping post-war European collecting, situating Sept 29-53 (Fiesole) within a context of internationally engaged patronage.