Auction PR Publicity Announcements News and Information
Auction PR Publicity Announcements News and Information

Winifred Nicholson Painting for Auction at Bonhams

A painting entitled Sea Treasures, by the artist Winifred Nicholson will be offered by Bonhams in the 20th Century British Art sale on 9th March, New Bond Street. It is estimated to sell for £50,000 –70,000.

Nicholson painted the scene in from the window sill of the house in Sandaig, belonging to the author Gavin Maxwell, when she was staying there.

Gavin Maxwell was a Scottish naturalist and author, best known for his work with otters. He wrote the book Ring of Bright Water (1960) about how he brought an otter back from Iraq and raised it in Scotland, which sold more than a million copies and was later made into a film. Sea Treasures, depicting the view towards the Hebridean islands of Eigg and Rhum, represents the same scene that Maxwell had when writing about the otters living there.

Nicholson was an English painter and colourist, married to the well known painter Ben Nicholson, who was central to the St Ives artists’ colony in the late 1920s. She is known for developing a personalised, impressionistic style that concentrated on domestic subjects and landscapes. Colour dominates through the glacial blue of the water and gem-like hues of the ‘sea treasures’.

The title ‘Ring of Bright Water’ was taken from a poem by Nicholson’s close friend, the poet Kathleen Raine, who said in her autobiography that Maxwell had been the love of her life. Both Nicholson and Raine made annual trips to Maxwell’s Sandbaig retreat to live simply, paint and write.

www.bonhams.com/20thcentury

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