Rhododendrons, Eigg in the Gatekeeper’s Cottage, Eigg, 1980 | Photo: Donald Wilkinson

Fine Art

To the Hebrides with Winifred Nicholson

17 October 2024

Rhododendrons, Eigg (Pink Rhododendrons) and Sound of Rum from Bay of Laig, Isle of Eigg (The Singing Sands) epitomise Winifred Nicholson’s love for Scotland and in particular the Hebridean island of Eigg.

They were acquired from the artist by her son, the designer Jake (Jacob) Nicholson (1927 - 2003), who cherished them for the rest of his life. We are delighted to offer them as part of our 31 October 2024 MODERN MADE evening sale to be held live in London.

Winifred Nicholson worked in Scotland repeatedly in the late 1940s and early 1950s, often accompanied by her friend, the poet Kathleen Raine. They stayed on the islands of Eigg and Canna and also in Sandaig on the mainland; there they rented Gavin Maxwell’s cottage, which he immortalised as Camusfèarna in his Ring of Bright Water trilogy.

Top image: Rhododendrons, Eigg in the Gatekeeper’s Cottage, Eigg, 1980 | Photo: Donald Wilkinson

MODERN MADE

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To the Hebrides with Winifred Nicholson

Join Senior Specialist Alice Strang as she discusses the work of Winifred Nicholson and the artist's love of Scotland, looking at 'Rhododendrons, Eigg (Pink Rhododendrons)' and 'Sound of Rum from Bay of Laig, Isle of Eigg (The Singing Sands)'.

A View of Eigg & Rum From the Mainland

Eigg is just five miles long by five miles wide and is situated twelve miles from Mallaig on the mainland, just south of Skye.

Some three decades passed between Nicholson’s first trip there, in the summer of 1950 with Raine and her last, in the Spring of 1980, with her daughter, the artist Kate Nicholson (1929-2019).

Raine had idyllic memories of her and Nicholson’s first experience of the island, later recalling:

‘The Factor [of Eigg] was previously employed by Winifred’s father...and he allowed us to camp during the day in an uninhabited cottage where Winifred painted and I wrote, or walked off gathering flowers, many of which Winifred painted…We boiled water and made ourselves cups of tea from time to time and enjoyed the illusion of living there…On our first visit to Eigg I remember it was sultry summer weather and we walked to the top of the island.’

(Quoted in Alice Strang, Winifred Nicholson in Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2003, p.47)

In her turn, whilst there Nicholson wrote to Jake exclaiming,'Kathleen has written some magical poems. I’ve done about 16 pictures here, how good I don’t know until I get back to look at them against other things.’ (quoted in Strang, op.cit., p.48).

WINIFRED NICHOLSON (BRITISH 1893-1981)

Sound of Rum from Bay of Laig, Isle of Eigg

Sound of Rum from Bay of Laig, Isle of Eigg reveals Nicholson’s deep connection with the Scottish sea- and landscape and her sensitivity to the gentle, shimmering light unique to the area.

The bay, on Eigg’s west coast, commands fine views over the sea to Rum, whose Cuillin peaks are seen emerging from diaphanous clouds. There is a sense of island remoteness and purity.

This painting is also known as The Singing Sands after the nearby beach of Camas Sgiotaig, where in certain conditions the sand makes noises when walked upon. This magical natural phenomenon has been explained by Geoffrey Grigson thus:

‘Dry blown sand around the coast may emit an unexpected sound, slight or pronounced, when you walk over it or drag a stick across it. Off the dunes and below the high-tide mark, water is drawn in and held between the grains of sand by capillary action. The grains do not touch. Without this water cushion dry grains rub together when they are moved, and if they are of the same shape and size they jerk against or across each other as they do so, vibrating and “singing”.’

(Geoffrey Grigson, The Shell Country Alphabet, from Apple Trees to Stone Circles, How to Understand the British Countryside, Particular Books, London, 2009, p.344).

When creating the work, Nicholson positioned herself behind and above the white foreshore in order to embrace the curve of the bay. Undulating ground, cliff and hill combine to create an awareness of natural rhythm, heightened by the edge of the wave at the boundary between water and beach. The sky holds muted sunshine as well as a suggestion of something more powerful. The delicate palette, based on blue, green and grey, carries an atmosphere of peace, beauty and a sense of wonder.

“‘Thirty years separate Winifred’s first and last known stays on Eigg; the first visit was with Kathleen [Raine] from June until July 1950. The last, which was to be her final working trip, was with her daughter Kate in May 1980…In 1950 Winifred and Kathleen stayed in the manse at night, but during the day worked in a crofter’s cottage at Kildonan…[They]…walked to Cleadale in the north of the island, Eigg’s only surviving group of crofts and it was near here that Winifred painted Sound of Rum from Bay of Laig, Isle of Eigg.’”

- Alice Strang, Winifred Nicholson in Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2003 p.47-48

Photo: Donald Wilkinson

Winifred Nicholson Painting Rhododendrons, Eigg in the Gatekeeper’s Cottage, Eigg, 1980

Nicholson and Kate spent two weeks on Eigg in May 1980, accompanied at first by the artist Donald Wilkinson and his family and secondly by the artists Valerie Thornton and Michael Chase. This time she stayed in the Gamekeeper’s Cottage.

As Alice Strang has explained:

‘The Gamekeeper’s Cottage is the highest house on the island, with panoramic views across the sea to the mainland. Due to the atmospheric conditions in the area, rainbows occur there with unusual frequency. From an early age Winifred had been fascinated by them, as they were a natural display of the splitting of light into the colour spectrum.’

(Strang, op.cit., p.50)

This phenomenon is celebrated in Rhododendrons, Eigg. A painting infused with colour and joy, it was created with the aid of a prism that Nicholson had recently acquired. Her series of prismatic paintings, of which Rhododendrons, Eigg is one of the finest, were extremely important to the artist.

Her grandson, Jovan Nicholson has explained, quoting her:

‘The way Winifred used a prism is straightforward: when you look through a prism the objects you see are rimmed with rainbow colours. “[My] prism is in a back pocket in my purse. I can put my hand into my pocket and pull it out whenever I want to see a rainbow. For the prism shows us rainbows everywhere.” She valued her prism as “a very little pot of gold”, for she “found out what flowers know, how to divide the colours as prisms do, onto longer and shorter wavelengths, and in so doing giving the luminosity and brilliance of pure colours…in the ordered sequence of the octave of colour.”’

(Jovan Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson: Liberation of Colour, Philip Wilson Publishers, London, 2016, p.32)

Moreover, Nicholson was drawn to paint flowers for much of her career, partly as a way to explore her theory that ‘colour is not just a coat over objects – it lies on the rim of objects between one form and the neighbouring form or space.’ (quoted in Judith Collins, Winifred Nicholson, The Tate Gallery, London, 1987, p.31).

She sensed that flowers:

‘…create colours out of the light of the sun, refracted by the rainbow prism…The flowers are sparks of light, built of and thrown out into the air as rainbows are thrown, in an arc…My paint brush always gives a tremor of pleasure when I let it paint a flower…to me they are the secret of the cosmos.’

(quoted in ed. Andrew Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson: Unknown Colour, Faber & Faber, London, 1987, pp.239 & 216)

WINIFRED NICHOLSON (BRITISH 1893-1981)

Rhododendrons, Eigg (Pink Rhododendrons), 1980

The rainbows that shimmer amidst the titular flowers in Rhododendrons, Eigg heighten the viewer’s awareness of their delicate beauty, as well as that of the patterned cloth on which they are presented and the expanse of their natural surroundings.

These are more sensed and glimpsed than simply seen, in an image in which an element of spirituality is combined with heartfelt optimism.

“On Eigg, at the age of eighty-six, Winifred created a vigorous late body of work…During this final working trip, Winifred was able to combine her deeply felt love of Scotland and fascination with the light there, with her lifelong concern for colour and the edges of the visible spectrum. In works such as Rhododendrons, Eigg and Hebridean Roses, Eigg (Private Collection) she looked through a prism in order to paint flowers, picked on the island, which created the spectrum of light caught in the glass vessels. In both works she set the flowers before seascapes which shimmer with northern spring light.”

- Alice Strang, Winifred Nicholson in Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2003, p.53

Sound of Rum from Bay of Laig, Isle of Eigg (The Singing Sands) and Rhododendrons, Eigg (Pink Rhododendrons) were included in the National Galleries of Scotland touring exhibition Winifred Nicholson in Scotland (2003-04) and were reproduced in the accompanying book by Alice Strang, now our Senior Specialist of Modern and Contemporary Art. They returned to a Scottish island when they were on long-loan to the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney between 2019 and 2024 (Nicholson having painted there during the summer of 1953).

Examples of Nicholson’s Scottish paintings can be found in the public collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario (Mrs Campbell’s Window, 1951), Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (Flodigarry Island, Skye, 1949) and Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery, Carlisle (Bonnie Scotland, c.1951).

We are grateful to Jovan Nicholson for his help in researching these paintings.