Winifred Nicholson

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. Brief Description of item(s) Indian miniature painting of a group of seven trumpeters (Appendix 1) Opaque watercolour on paper, 16.3 x 23.7 cm. By Nainsukh of Guler (c.1710 – 1778). Circa 1735-40. Good condition. 2. Context • Provenance Acquired by the artist Winifred Nicholson in 1919-20 when accompanying her father, the politican Charles Roberts, Undersecretary of State for India 1914- 15 and a member of the Montagu-Chelmsford Commission, on travels to India, Ceylon and Burma. Thence by descent. • Key literary and exhibition references Ashton, Sir Leigh (ed.). The Art of India and Pakistan: a commemorative catalogue of the exhibition held at The Royal Academy of Arts. London, 1947- 8. London, (Faber and Faber), [1950], cat. 621 (739), p. 139, and plate 117. Exhibition and publication. Khandalavala, K. Pahari Miniature Painting. Bombay (New Book Co., 1958), p. 135. Goswamy, B.N. Nainsukh of Guler: A great Indian painter from a small hill- state. Zurich (Artibus Asiae Publishers, Supplementum XLI, Museum Rietberg), cat. 13, pp. 72-3. Exhibition and publication. 3. Waverley criteria The painting meets all of the Waverley criteria; the area of art learning for which it is significant is the history of Indian painting. 1. The former owner, Winifred Nicholson, was an important artist whose treatment of colour was influenced by visiting and seeing the art of India. 2. The painting is of outstanding aesthetic quality and highly original composition. 3. The artist, Nainsukh, is of great importance in the history of Indian painting. This unique painting contributes to the understanding of the range and development of his work. DETAILED CASE 1. Detailed description of item(s) if more than in Executive summary, and any comments. This outstanding painting depicts seven musicians blowing the exceptionally long Pahari horns called turhi and is an interesting representation of a musical performance in the hill region of northern India in the mid-18th century. It was painted by Nainsukh of Guler, the most famous and highly regarded artist of the Pahari or ‘Hill’ schools of northern India, which are a major and popular genre of Indian miniature painting. The total number of paintings attributed to Nainsukh in the UK is in the region of 20, although not all attributions can be considered equally secure nor are they all of comparable quality to this example. Examples of this calibre are therefore rare, especially given the unique composition of this painting. 2. Detailed explanation of the outstanding significance of the item(s). The provenance of the painting is of great interest. Its original owner, the artist Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) was a renowned colourist whose work is represented in public institutions such as the Tate gallery, is extensively published and has appeared in many exhibitions. She was married to the artist Ben Nicholson from 1920 (just after she acquired this painting) to 1938 and has often been discussed in relation to that fruitful working partnership, but she enjoyed considerable success and critical acclaim and has recently become better understood as an artist in her own right. This is indicated by a growing number of publications such as a large study of the artist by Christopher Andreae (2009). Winifred Nicholson has increasingly been the sole subject of exhibitions, such as retrospective at the Tate in 1987 and a touring exhibition beginning at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, in 2001, while two separate exhibitions, ‘Winifred Nicholson: Liberation of Colour’ and ‘Winifred Nicholson in Cumberland’, were touring in 2016-17. Winifred Nicholson visited India in 1919-20 with her father, the Liberal M.P. Charles Roberts, who had been Undersecretary of State for India (1914-15) and now travelled to India as a member of the Montagu-Chelmsford Commission working on political reforms in India. There she acquired this and other paintings, and was influenced by her experience of India and its art in her understanding of light and colour, which played such a central role in her work. Her work was transformed by the trip and she ‘noticed how eastern art uses lilac to create sunlight’1, later writing that ‘Colour… was used as melody by the Easterns’.2 The Indian paintings she owned, including the present example, must have had some influence, whether overt or subconscious, on the development of her artistic consciousness. The painting was displayed in the ground-breaking and historically significant exhibition ‘The Art of India and Pakistan’ opened in 1947, the year of India’s independence, at the Royal Academy, and was one of the paintings selected for illustration in the catalogue. It was also shown in the important exhibition on Nainsukh at the Rietberg Museum in 1997. The painting of trumpeters is of outstanding aesthetic importance. The composition is highly novel and the painting shows a striking mastery of different postures, poses and individual facial types. The distinctive hill trumpets are show to dramatic effect. 1 W. Nicholson, ‘Unknown Colour’, 1937, article cited in Nicholson, Jovan, Winifred Nicholson: Liberation of Colour, London and New York (Philip Wilson Publishers), 2016, p.12. 2 Collins, Judith, Winifred Nicholson, London (Tate Gallery Publications), 1987, p.13. The work demonstrates the artist’s revolutionary use of space. As B.N. Goswamy writes (1997), the artist ‘achieves here a pattern that tautly balances order with abandon’ in this work that is handled ‘with such supreme assurance’ (see Appendices 2 and 3).3 Goswamy comments on the clockwise direction in which the disposition of the horns leads the eye. The variety with which the musicians are depicted is also noteworthy, with carefully individuated postures, faces, hands and costumes. An earlier scholar of Pahari paintings, Karl Khandalavala, described the work as ‘a vigorous study full of verve and action such as is rarely seen in Pahari painting’ (see Appendix 4).4 The subject matter is also of interest at a time when efforts are being made to unlock the secrets of Indian music and its artistic aspects, for example at a recent exhibition ‘Music of the Three Worlds’ at Asia House and in the ‘Musical Wonders of India’ project at the V&A (2015). The artist, Nainsukh of Guler, is unquestionably the most acclaimed Pahari artist and the one about whom most is known. He is thus a highly important figure in the history of Indian miniature painting. Nainsukh’s innovative and distinctive work has been the subject of much scholarly attention including a major retrospective exhibition at the Rietberg Museum. In addition to many published references the artist is receiving attention in work aimed at a wider public, for example through paintings shown on social media by William Dalrymple and in an article in the V&A Magazine by the journalist Philip Hensher (2017). The painting under consideration is an impressive and unusual example that seems to combine aspects of Nainsukh’s early work with some of his later achievements. B.N. Goswamy, the leading scholar of Nainsukh’s work, considers it to be an early work pre-dating the body of paintings made for the artist’s major patron, Balwant Singh of Jasrota, but he also notes that the handling of the figures is very close to the later group. W.G. Archer in ‘Paintings of the Punjab Hills’ (1973) dated the painting later, to c.1750. Jeremiah P. Losty also now argues against an early date and has commented that the painting is ‘on a much higher level of achievement than most of the early work, showing a wonderful mastery of different postures and profiles melded into a highly unusual composition’.5 In relation to the overall development of Pahari painting, Losty (2008) has also written that in contrast to the work of his father, Pandit Seu ‘Nainsukh is not afraid to lower his viewpoint here so that the musicians are depicted in a tightly controlled group in a naturalistic observation’ (Appendix 5).6 The importance of the artist and the unique composition of this painting indicate that it would be of high significance for the study of the history of painting in India. Although a number of Nainsukh paintings exist in UK collections, this is a remarkable example of this work. 3 Goswamy, B.N. Nainsukh of Guler: A great Indian painter from a small hill-state. Zurich (Artibus Asiae Publishers, Supplementum XLI, Museum Rietberg), cat 13, pp. 72-3. 4 Khandalavala, K. Pahari Miniature Painting. Bombay (New Book Co., 1958), p. 135. 5 Personal correspondence, 2018 6 Losty, J. ‘A Group of Trumpeters’, text for Francesca Galloway exhibition catalogue, 2008. .

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