1927 (snowscape)

In the early 1920s Ben Nicholson and his wife Winifred spent the best part of three winters painting in the Swiss Alps. The practice of working in snowy landscapes especially sharpened Nicholson’s ability to modulate whites and light. By 1925, when he painted Snowscape, he had clearly developed a talent to evoke snowy weather, here through the subtle use of pallid greys, blues and browns.
This work was almost certainly painted at the Nicholsons’ Cumbrian farmhouse, Banks Head, which Ben and Winifred bought in 1924. In a letter to Jim Ede Nicholson described the impact of snow there: ‘we have three inches of snow outside & have had a series of amazing storms – huge waves of sleet travelling horizontally & going through & up & round & over everything. I want to do a painting with snow snowing slowly … I hope it’ll look like this view from my studio.’