Footnotes

Provenance
With The Beaux Arts Gallery, London
Dorothy Forster Hodgkin, thence by descent to the present owners
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
London, The Beaux Arts Gallery, 7th Exhibition of Pictures and Sculpture by the "Seven and Five" Society, 4-22 January 1927, cat.no.10
London, The Beaux Arts Gallery, Winifred Nicholson, April 1927, cat.no.33

Literature
Drawing & Design, Volume II, 1927 (ill.b&w)

The introduction to Winifred Nicholson's exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery April 1927 described her painting as 'full of growth and freshness – delicate, keen, inward in spirit and vision, soft and rounded in execution.' And continued, 'It is the loving grasp ... of what has been for ever familiar and dear, that moves us to such an enchantment in spring...and in works of true imagination, however lowly and fragile, when they spring fresh and directly form the human heart and understanding.' Alongside Window Sill – Lugano (Tate) and Cyclamen and Primula (Kettle's Yard) also in the exhibition, this quote, ascribed to H.C.S., but written by Jim Ede who founded Kettle's Yard, encapsulates the charm and essence of Flowers – Sutton Veny.

Sutton Veny was the house in Wiltshire that William Nicholson, Winifred's father-in-law, had moved to in 1923 with his second wife Edie, and was to prove an inspiring place for Winifred to paint. William first wrote to Winifred two days before her marriage to Ben Nicholson in 1920, 'My Dear Winifred, I am so sure that Ben will have a perfect wife that I must send you my love tonight and a line to tell you how happy I am about everything. See you at breakfast!!! Yours affectionately, William Nicholson,' and so started a fruitful painting conversation. William and Ben had not had the easiest of relationships, but by Christmas 1924 they had repaired their differences and Ben and Winifred subsequently made a number of visits (see Patricia Read, William Nicholson, Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Modern Art Press, London, 2011, pp. 409, 423, 436). Here there were discussions about painting, "'Yellow ochre is a good highlight,' said Father William, 'don't you think so Rosie?' I had not yet spoken but I lifted my voice at that – 'I use Yellow Ochre for my dark.'" (See Winifred Nicholson, Yellow Ochre - William Nicholson 'Unknown Colour, Paintings, Letters, Writings' by Winifred Nicholson, Ed. Andrew Nicholson, Faber and Faber, London, 1987, pp. 77- 80). Not only did they discuss painting, but William and Winifred painted the same jug of flowers, each from a different side, (see Jovan Nicholson, Art and Life; Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, William Staite Murray, 1920-1931, Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2013, pp. 62, 63) in what Winifred described as a memorably happy time: ' William and Ben made jokes that fly and one never remembers. I cannot recall one of them, and yet they sparkled with wit and laughter all around us' (Unknown Colour p. 77). This atmosphere was clearly conducive to painting as Winifred Nicholson made a number of other pictures while staying at Sutton Veny, including Dressing Table, Sutton Veny (op. cit. p. 67), and a portrait of William Nicholson (Unknown Colour p. 78), as well as Wylie Valley No. 1 and Wylie Valley No. 2 (the latter two both untraced).

The first owner of this picture was Dorothy Forster Hodgkin who was Helen Sutherland's oldest friend. Helen Sutherland was Winifred Nicholson's (and Ben Nicholson's) most important collector (see Helen Sutherland Collection: a pioneer collection of the 1930s, Arts Council, 1970-1), and after the breakup of her marriage had been more or less adopted by the Hodgkin family and introduced by them to north Northumberland where she settled in 1929. It must have been Helen Sutherland who introduced Dorothy Hodgkin to Winifred's work, although she was extremely generous to her friends and it is possible that Flowers – Sutton Veny was a gift (see E.C. (Teddy) Hodgkin's, A Memoir of Helen Sutherland, Tate Gallery Archive 958.1).

We are grateful to Jovan Nicholson for compiling this catalogue entry.