Woman playing a piano (Vera Moore)

Winifred Nicholson

Of all aspects of a painting’s composition, it was colour which was most crucial to Winifred Nicholson. She wrote that when she read the letters between Gaugin and Van Gogh, and once she learnt of their theories of colour, she “felt my eyes beginning to open”. To Winfred Nicholson, colour had a life of its own and was more than simply a tool to create an observational depiction of a scene. After separating from her husband Ben Nicholson she moved with their three children to Paris, where she spent the 1930s and where she met with artists such as Kandinsky and Mondrian. Although her works are figurative her use of colour is modernist and she was able to reconcile her interest in the domestic with avant-garde modernism and abstraction. On this subject she commented: “Yes I’d like to get my work more abstract, but I seek the abstract of colour, which is to be found looking into the picture”. This painting is thought to be a portrait of Vera Moore, who was a close friend of Winifred Nicholson from the 1920s. Vera Moore was a New Zealand-born pianist, as well as the partner of Constantin Brancusi. She was also a close friend of the important modernist art collector Helen Sutherland, who greatly admired her 'heavenly' playing and wrote: 'Vera Moore is lovely when she plays - it is sculpture I think - the strange almost bland unseeing eyes and head of sculpture and inward life somehow. Another friend of mine said she looked as if she had just been told a lovely secret when she played’.

c. 1930

Oil on canvas

59.6 x 72.4cm

440

© Trustees of Winifred Nicholson. Image courtesy of The Ingram Collection

This work is part of The Ingram Collection of Modern British & Contemporary Art and was on loan to the Lightbox for the exhibition "Redressing the balance: Women Artists from The Ingram Collection" (11 August - 20 September 2020).