Painted at ‘Chy-an-Kerris’, the house in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, where Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth had lived since September 1942, 1945 (St Ives) belongs to a small group of paintings by the artist which depict a Union Jack (often only partially painted) nestled amidst a still life in front of an open window, with a view out to the landscape beyond.1
Alive with activity and progress, the present work depicts a view across the harbour, which, at this time, was very much a working port. In the middle ground, there are numerous fishing boats and, in the far distance, we see a schooner heading out to sea in full sail. A statement of British identity and pride, the Union Jack was a new motif that Nicholson adopted within his work to mark 8 May 1945 (VE Day), the official end date of World War II. Although the fallout of the war was to continue, ‘life was coming back to normal; fresh air was again blowing through the land after years of enclosure. It was no longer necessary to have blackout on one’s windows in order to hide from the enemy in the sky.’ 2 Indeed, the hope and optimism of this particular moment is reflected here in this cheerful scene of normality re-emerging in Britain and life carrying on without threat.
To make 1945 (St Ives), Nicholson first prepared the board with gesso, which he then scraped into (with the assistance of a tool), to create a textured ground. Next, he applied muted tones of brown and grey oil paint, before rubbing this back, resulting in a wonderfully varied surface, with an organic, weathered appearance not dissimilar to stone. Upon this, Nicholson has drawn the composition in pencil, in a naïve manner reminiscent of Alfred Wallis, erased some of these lines and introduced colour using gouache and oil.3
Executed three years after 1942 (H.S.) (cat.10), the present work marks a departure from Nicholson’s overtly abstract paintings, a shift encouraged by the artist’s dealer, Alex Reid & Lefevre, for commercial reasons. However, while this is a figurative work by definition, the painting’s distorted sense of perspective, flatness and interlocking planes harks to Cubism, and, as with the artist’s abstract works, which often incorporate a small area of intense colour, the present work features only a few carefully selected coloured elements, which similarly has the effect of drawing the viewer’s eye to certain aspects of the composition.

1 Other examples from this series reside in the permanent collections of the Tate,
London, and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
2 Norbert Lynton, Ben Nicholson, Phaidon, London, 1993, p195
3 Nicholson first met Wallis in St Ives in 1928