Art
Memorable
John McEwen
Last week saw the death of two of England's oldest and most distinguish- ed painters, Ben Nicholson and Sir Cedric Morris. They were almost complementary in their difference. Nicholson (b.1894) was much married, austere in taste and style, in- ternationally acclaimed, a public advocate of progressive art and modernist tendencies and acclaimed accordingly. Morris (b.1889) never married, appears to have been more of a hedonist in his life and art, remained a tolerant and amused individualist to the end, founded his own art school and in- herited his title. In artistically tiny England, needless to say, their careers did coincide at one point. Morris was elected a member of
the avant-garde Seven & Five Society in the Twenties, when Nicholson was its chair- man; and he also influenced and pushed Chrisopher Wood, who in turn influenced Nicholson. Wood committed suicide in 1930. Nicholson's descriptive drawing con- tinued to owe something to Wood's, though his reputation today rests largely on his abstract work in relief, especially of the late Thirties. Here he, literally, carved himself a niche in the already crowded tem- ple of international abstract art. The white on white series, in particular, must remain the acme of his achievement. These pieces have a poetry and succinctness, given that he judged the success of a painting 'by the quality of light given off, that he was never to equal.
It is a poetry also conveyed by his writing. A visit to Mondrian's studio was a turning point: 'The thing I remembered most was the feeling of light in his room and the pauses and silences during and after he'd been talking. The feeling in his studio must have been not unlike the feeling in one of those caves where lions used to go to have thorns taken out of their paws.' Good taste and over-fastidiousness, however, tended too often to draw the poetry from Nicholson's own art. The particular type of geometric abstraction that he espoused with monkish austerity was narrow and already much exploited. By the time of his interna- tional success he was largely engaged in ringing the changes to ever more arty-crafty effect or pandering to the preconceptions of design. But if two retrospectives at the Tate in 15 years and an OM were excessive reward, his overall service to art certainly deserved public recognition. Not only was he a leader of the progressive fight between the wars, but he and his second wife, Bar- bara Hepworth, revitalised the old artistic colony at St Ives.
Nicholson has had the misfortune to die when his reputation as an artist is probably at its lowest ebb since the onset of his fame. Morris, always opposite, died on an un- precedented upsurge of interest. Only last year he had the satisfaction of having work bought by the Tate for the first time three purchases now on view as part of the Gallery's display of new acquisitions. His portraits, flower and, perhaps most original of all, bird pictures in oils, are richly painted and stubbornly individual works. He became an expert gardener, taking special pleasure in growing rare species of iris and crocus; and his private East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing assumed with time the status of an institution. His most distinguished pupil proved to be Lu- cian Freud. The first school was at Dedham, and three weeks after he arrived the young Freud accidentally caused the building to be burned to the ground. A new school was opened at Hadleigh. Morris never alluded to the incident till 30 years later, when his former pupil arrived at Hadleigh one day to take him out to lunch. Freud asked where he would like to go. 'How about Dedham,' he replied, 'it might revive old memories.'
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