A Cycladic marble head

Footnotes

Provenance:
Charles Gimpel, (1913-1973), co-founder of Gimpel Fils, London.
Since before 1966, Ben Nicholson, OM (1894-1982) gifted from the above.
Estate of Angela Mary Verren Taunt (1930-2023), inherited from the above in 1983.

In a letter from Ben Nicholson to Barbara Hepworth, dated 26 April 1966, he notes: 'We have a rather beautiful-very beautiful-Cycladic violin (very small) and a Cycl. small head...which Charles G{impel} gave us-they stand on our wooden mantelpiece'. (Lee Beard Ed., Ben Nicholson Writings and Ideas 2019, pp 69-70). In an earlier letter, dated 20 April 1956, he writes to Barbara Hepworth: '...I don't know of any work which I feel goes better with mine unless it's Cycladic or some other primitive works', (ibid, p.126).

Ben Nicholson met the artist Angela Verren Taunt at a Christmas party in 1971, after which a close friendship developed. In her memoir of Ben Nicholson, Angela remembered during her first visit to his studio that there were still-life objects all around and a beautiful book on Cycladic art. The almost abstract forms of Cycladic sculpture were clearly an inspiration to Nicholson, who in a 1959 interview with The Times listed the sculpture as inspiring, along with the likes of Ucello, Goya, Picasso and Mondrian.

The above head has traces of vertical linear markings on the cheeks and a pattern across the forehead. For a discussion of facial painting on Cycladic figures, see Dr. Monica Bulger, Early Cycladic figurines, in Smarthistory, March 22, 2024. There is a head by The Goulandris Master with markings across the forehead illustrated in, J. Thimme, Art and Culture of the Cyclades in the Third Millennium B.C., Chicago, 1977, no.177, p.203, which also includes another similar head with vertical cheek markings. In her PhD dissertation Pat Getz-Preziosi also illustrates the laterly mentioned head, with red painted cheek markings, from the National Museum of Denmark, (P.G. Preziosi, Traditional Canon and Individual Hand in Early Cycladic Sculpture, Dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge , unpubl. 1972, p.210, D186). For other examples of Spedos variety heads with long noses, flared sides to the forehead and some with traces of pigments, cf. J. Thimme, Art and Culture of the Cyclades in the Third Millennium B.C., Chicago, 1977, nos. 205-208 p.282.