Φ Kate Nicholson (1929-2019)

Φ Kate Nicholson (1929-2019)
Mas de Fourques
Signed and indistinctly inscribed KATE NICHOLSON MAS * (to stretcher)
Oil on canvas, 1953
76.2 x 63.4cm

Provenance:
Private collection;
Lay's Auctioneers, Penzance, Cornish Art and Fine Art Sale, 13 May 2021, lot 125;
Private Collection

Mas de Fourques, near Lunel in the South of France, was the home ofJeanHugo,greatgrandson of Victor Hugo, and a friend of Winifred Nicholson. Winifred and her children visited Hugo in the 1930s when she painted a number of pictures of Mas de Fourques (see Jovan Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson: Liberation of Colour, Philip Wilson Publishers, London, 2016, pp. 22-23, 74-77, and The Vineyard, Mas de Fourques, Sotheby’s, 17 March 2020, lot 189). The Nicholsons visited again in September 1953 which is probably when the present work was painted. Kate would have been keenly aware of her mother’s paintings of Mas de Fourques, and while there are many similarities, the voice with her characteristic exuberance of colour and delight in the Mediterranean light is clearly her own.