Lot 37
Lot 37
Ben Nicholson (1894-1982)

Nine autograph letters signed (‘Ben’) to Maria Schweter (later Kansier), 67 Cheyne Walk, Villa Capriccio, St Ives, Brissago, 1920-c.1966

Price Realised GBP 5,670
Estimate
GBP 1,000 - GBP 1,500
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Ben Nicholson (1894-1982)

Nine autograph letters signed (‘Ben’) to Maria Schweter (later Kansier), 67 Cheyne Walk, Villa Capriccio, St Ives, Brissago, 1920-c.1966

Price Realised GBP 5,670
Price Realised GBP 5,670
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Ben Nicholson (1894-1982)
Nine autograph letters signed (‘Ben’) to Maria Schweter (later Kansier), 67 Cheyne Walk, Villa Capriccio, St Ives, Brissago, 1920-c.1966
17 pages total, various sizes from 210 x 295mm, with three postcards and one Christmas card all addressed to Schweter, and a printed copy of Un Plastico Solitario: Fulvio Corsini (1910) with a dedication to Schweter. Provenance: Phillips, 24 October 1985, lot 592.

Discussing details of his life, work, and exhibitions: ‘Yes I’ve been married twice…second marriage 1932 to Barbara Hepworth … one of the half dozen best sculptors in this world’. The earlier letters thank Schweter ‘for one of the – if not the – happiest times of my Life’ and refer to his work: ‘Painting goes absolutely A 1.’ He discusses possibilities for future exhibitions. He describes the house he bought in Lugano in 1921 ‘with the one & one only person’ and gives his impressions of Italy. The correspondence then lapses, resuming in the 1950s. In 1965, recounting details of his life, he describes a notice in the Munich paper about the Tate Gallery: ‘said they’d always supposed that England had only one “great” painter, Turner, but that they see that now they have another’. He reminisces about a trip with Schweter ‘one does not forget such good experiences in this life’, complaining that ‘Milan is now so full of people & cars, it is no longer as we knew it’.
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Sophie MeadowsSenior Specialist
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