A fresh perspective on reassuringly familiar artists

This exhibition examines a loosely knit community of artists and their interaction over a decade at the beginning of the last century. It is centred around the marriage of Ben and Winifred Nicholson (which began to split up in 1931), involves their crucial joint-friendship with Christopher Wood and a fruitful exhibiting relationship with William Staite Murray, topped off by the all-pervading influence of a true original, Alfred Wallis, Cornish fisherman, marine-stores dealer and compulsive painter. The intellectual and artistic meeting of these individuals was a formative impulse in the development of Modernism in England; and it could be said — with some justification — that they brought out the best in each other. Certainly the exhibition has been selected and arranged to do just that.

What’s so clever about the hanging is the way even the visitor with some previous knowledge of these artists is provoked into thinking, ‘Well, who’s this by?’ Except for Wallis, whose naturally primitive approach is difficult to confuse, the closeness of the other three painters at this point in their careers means that you not only need to study each picture intently before looking at its label, but that when you do, you are still likely to be surprised by the identity of the artist. Clear-cut divisions are further blurred by all three painting the same or similar subjects. For instance, the show begins with two versions of Tippacott in Devon: a blue and green watercolour by Winifred on the left and a pencil drawing by Ben on the right. Aside from the difference in colour, the most noticeable thing is the similarity of direct structural approach.