Dec 58 (Mousehole Cornwall) is a fine example of Ben Nicholson’s distinct post-cubist exploration of landscape and still life motifs. In this work, through his proficient and playful use of line, the artist draws together the objects and their setting to create a gratifying visual synergy. Across his career Nicholson strove to create pictures that transcended the simple or analytical rendering of objects. Whilst an arrangement of cups, jugs and bottles might act as the starting point, their role within a composition was to become an equivalent, or idea, of experiences beyond themselves. As Nicholson would explain in the late 1950s, whilst the “idea and form content in a painting are inseparable”, in many ways his “‘still life’ paintings [were] closely identified with landscape, more closely than [his] landscapes which relate perhaps more to ‘still life’”. (1)

The landscape that appears in the present work relates to the Cornish fishing port of Mousehole, situated several miles south of Penzance. Pronounced ‘Muzzle’, the name had appeared in the titles of a number of the artist’s paintings in the previous decade, including 11 November 1947 (Mousehole) (British Council Collection). Whilst there are clear compositional similarities between this painting and Dec 58 (Mousehole Cornwall) – including the positioning of the boats within the bay – the still life elements of the later painting are more linear and transparent in appearance. In turn, these forms have become more dominant within the overall composition, combining to a greater degree with the landscape.

Dec 58 (Mousehole Cornwall) was completed towards the end of hugely significant and eventful period for the artist. In 1954 Nicholson had been awarded the Ulisse Award at the Venice Biennale, followed by a critically acclaimed retrospective exhibition tour that visited Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich and London. Other notable awards included the Guggenheim International Painting Prize, (New York, 1956) and the International Prize for Painting (São Paulo Art Biennial, 1957). It was against the backdrop of this growing international reputation that in March 1958 Nicholson had moved from the relative seclusion of St Ives to the Swiss canton of Ticino, positioning himself more centrally in Europe.

It might therefore be seen as surprising that the present artwork, which dates from towards the end of the artist’s first year in Switzerland, takes as its theme a still life motif set within a Cornish landscape. In fact, Nicholson had acknowledged several years earlier, whilst still living in St Ives, that although he found “Cornwall lovely to live in”, he was finding it “v[ery] difficult in which to make direct drawings” since he had come to know it “so well”. (2) His new environment appears to have given him the freedom to explore the Cornish landscape with a fresh vision. Perhaps finding similarities with the boats that he could see on Lake Maggiore from his new home high above in Ronco-sopra-Ascona, Dec 58 (Mousehole Cornwall), marks a moment of transition in the artist’s life and career, combining a fondness for the past with a sense of excitement for what is to come.

(1) Ben Nicholson, Statements: a review of British abstract art since 1956. Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 1957
(2) Letter to Winifred Nicholson, 14 May [1956], quoted in Lee Beard (ed.), Ben Nicholson: Writings and Ideas, Lund Humphries, 2019, p. 89