WHITE COTTAGE, VILLAGE ROAD, DENHAM
The organizers of this memorial plaque would like to thank a large number of people for their assistance, encouragement and financial support. These include the present owners of White Cottage, Robin and Meryl Chhabra, all those who have very generously donated towards the plaque, Buckinghamshire County Council, South Bucks District Council, Denham Parish Council, English Heritage, the Nicholson family, and stonecutter Martin Cook, whose work in Delabole slate so imaginatively reflects the personality and work of both Ben and Sir William Nicholson. The Parish Council would also like to record its sincere thanks to Mrs Rosemary Temple whose idea this was and whose tireless efforts made sure the project was such a success.Sir William Newzam Prior Nicholson (1872-1949)
Sir William Nicholson was first known for his work as an illustrator and author of children's books. His partnership with James Pryde, his brother-in-law, was noted for striking graphical work and woodcuts - they were known as the Beggarstaff Brothers, and their poster work was significant historically. He married Mabel Pryde (1871–1918), also an artist, in 1893. After 1900, encouraged by Whistler, he concentrated on painting.
Benjamin Lauder Nicholson OM (1894-1982)
Their son Ben Nicholson was born at the former Eight Bells PH (now White Cottage), Village Road, Denham, Buckinghamshire, in 1894, was baptised at the nearby church of St Mary, and moved to London with his parents two years later. He studied at the Slade School, where he was a contemporary of Paul Nash, another Buckinghamshire artist, and then travelled widely in Europe and the United States for a few years. In 1920 Nicholson married the artist Winifred Roberts. Nicholson’s early work consists of delicately worked still lifes, which show the influence of his father. In the 1920s he began painting figurative and abstract works inspired by Post Impressionism and Cubism, which he had seen whilst travelling. His first one-man show was at the Adelphi Gallery in 1921. In 1932 he visited Paris with the sculptor Barbara Hepworth and met Picasso, Braque, Brancusi and Arp.
On subsequent visits to Paris in 1933 and 1934 they met Mondrian and Moholy-Nagy. His works reflect his contact with Braque, and suggest the influence of both Hepworth and Mondrian. In 1937 he became editor of Circle, and from 1939 to 1958 lived in Cornwall with Barbara Hepworth, whom he married in 1938.
His later work moved regularly between abstraction and figuration, always with cool, harmonious colours, subtle textures and precise interlocking shapes. In 1945/46 he moved from reliefs to linear, abstract paintings. Nicholson was commissioned to paint a mural for the Time-Life Building in London in 1952. In 1954 he was given retrospectives at the Venice Biennale and at the Tate Gallery, London, and in 1955 the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. In 1958 he moved to Ticino in Switzerland, but eventually moved back to London, where he died in February 1982.
Ben Nicholson's work has come to be seen as the quintessence of British modernism. His austere geometric paintings and reliefs are among some of the most influential abstract works in British art.
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Denham, 22 May 2010
Click on each photograph for a larger version
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