Nicholson remained in St Ives for the best part of two decades, enjoying its intense light and sea views. Nicholson would paint a host of landscapes - such as 1928 (cornish port) - inspired by Wallis’s playful distortion of scale and perspective. In the late-1920s, another major influence arrived: namely, Alfred Wallis, a retired Cornish fisherman who doubled as a self-taught painter of naive port scenes. In later life, looking back on that period, Nicholson stated that ‘Cubism, once discovered, couldn’t be undiscovered.’ It was a movement that continued to inspire him at different points throughout his career. A fine example, July 25-47 (still life - Odyssey 2), was sold at Christie’s in 2021. Thereafter he started rendering his repertoire of jugs, glasses and other table-top objects as flat shapes on the picture plane. Nicholson first encountered Cubism through the works of Picasso, on a visit to Paris in 1921. The influence of Cubism and Alfred Wallis His first works were still lifes painted in a naturalistic fashion, but new influences soon brought themselves to bear - notably Cézanne and the Cubists. The inspiration for his art extended far beyond his own family, too. For a start, Ben spent his career moving seamlessly back and forth between the figurative and the abstract, rather than being devoted to the latter. The truth was probably more nuanced than that.
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