Beschreibung:

pastel on grey paper and pastel on cream paper, both unframed (2) 30cm x 45.5cm (11.5in x 17.8in) and 35.2cm x 50.6cm (13.8in x 20in) Provenance: Acquired from the artist by Jake Nicholson and thence by descent to the present owner. Winifred Nicholson and Greece Winifred Nicholson and her daughter Kate visited Greece for the first time in 1960. They returned for extensive painting trips every year until 1967. Winifred wrote to Jake from Delphi in 1961 explaining something of the country’s attraction for her: ‘The sunshine is very wonderful and the colour of everything is marvellous…The sea is emerald near land and then aquamarine, so transparent you can see golden, gleaming transparencies to the very depths, possibly buried sunken treasure…The hills which look brown bare from the bus, when you tread on them are wild flowers, perfume of honey and thyme, like a carpet – every kind and colour of flowers and all wonderful shapes, clear and definite like everything in Greece.’ (letter of 1 May 1961 quoted in Andrew Nairne and Elizabeth Fisher, Winifred Nicholson Music of Colour, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 2012, unpaginated). Winifred worked en plein air in Greece, often using bright pastels and crayons to capture the sense of natural beauty and presence of ancient history which she felt there. Works like The Argive Twins Descend (lot XXX) and Agamemnon and Clytemnestra (lot XXX) illustrate her deep interest in Greek mythology, as revealed in a significant yet less well-known strand within her practice.