Modern Spirituality

Winifred Nicholson, Moonlight and Lamplight  1937

Having embraced abstraction, Nicholson contended that ‘material resemblances were of no account - and that art could be valid without resemblances to physical objects’.

Writing the year Moonlight and Lamplight was painted, Nicholson stated that she was ‘using colour to express colour - the form could take whatever form the colour wanted’. She was ‘never interested in form, or shape or volume or mass to express colour,’ but ‘studied the way the rainbow prisms break up white light into colour and ... the balance and pose of the weight of one colour against another’.

Gallery label, April 2012

Winifred Nicholson, Recollect  1973

Wilkie owned four paintings by Winifred Nicholson, two of which were acquired by the Tate Gallery. These are 'The Hunter's Moon' which is shown nearby, and this painting. Both works demonstrate Wilkie's interest in collecting paintings on the theme of the seasons. 'The Hunter's Moon' evokes autumn which was seen by the artist as a time of adventure. 'Recollect', however, was painted in late spring 1973 and suggests a sense of looking back and remembering. This sentiment seems to have been shared by Wilkie. He remarked: 'The pictures of Winifred Nicholson represent for me the world of childhood and early adolescence. It is a world of order, security and cultivated civilisation'.

Gallery label, September 2004

Wassily Kandinsky, Swinging  1925

The title ‘Swinging’ captures this work’s sense of movement. Kandinsky believed painting should aim to be as abstract as music. He worked to create art that was free from all references to the material world. For him, colour in particular was essential for liberating art from representing the visible world.

Gallery label, August 2019

Lynda Benglis, Apache Mohave  1992

Pamela Colman Smith, ‘Impromptu’ Sinding  1907

‘Impromptu’ Sinding is one of several drawings by Pamela Colman Smith that were inspired by classical music. Colman Smith initially sketched out their designs with automatic drawing while listening to the music before working up these free sketches into finished drawings. Executed in June 1907, it depicts three female figures in flowing robes and wearing S-shaped headdresses sitting on a cliff in a rocky landscape. A tower is visible on another cliff in the distance. The drawing is inscribed by Smith on the verso: ‘The Rulers of the World “And they sit in far off silent places, and thoughts grow up like towers out of the earth”’. It was inspired by the Norwegian composer Christian Sinding’s Impromptu for piano, op. 31/4 1896. The drawing is executed in watercolour and ink on paper, in muted tones but with small touches of a distinctive bright pink and orange pigments to highlight aspects of the figures. Also in Tate’s collection are Grieg ‘Spring Song’ 1907 (Tate T15362) and Mozart ‘Symphony “Prague”’ 1907 (Tate T15364).

Partou Zia, Flowering Rod  2006

Flowering Rod 2006 is a large painting in oil on canvas that depicts a grey and blue figure standing in a landscape and holding a rod with red flowers. Green smoke is emanating from the figure’s mouth. There is an uprooted, upside-down tree on the left of the image, with further red blooms in the centre. The elements of the painting are not in proportion to one another. The image is somewhat dreamlike in quality, expressed in this lack of perspective, the loose brushwork and the hazy background, with little distinction between land and sky. The figure is likely to be a self-portrait of the artist. Self-portraits were a particularly important aspect of Zia’s work in expressing her identity as a woman and painter. They also reflected her ongoing interest in the intuitive, spirituality and the development of self-knowledge.

Marc Chagall, Bouquet with Flying Lovers  c.1934–47

According to the artist, this picture was begun in the mid-1930s, when he was living in Paris and painting a number of still lifes of flowers. He worked on it at intervals over a period of many years, and the present composition is the final state of three or four. In it two lovers hover behind the dominating vase of flowers, while an angel flies in through the window. To the right is a glimpse of the village of Vitebsk in modern day Belarus, where the artist was born. The painting appears to evoke an atmosphere of happiness, but the artist said that it expressed feelings of loss and nostalgia: his wife Bella had died shortly before the final repainting of the work, and he was passing through a period of mourning.

Gallery label, March 2023

Leon Underwood, Casement to Infinity  1930

After studying at the Slade in 1919, Leon Underwood embarked on a prolific career as a sculptor, painter and print maker, producing an eclectic body of work. In 1930 Underwood produced ten paintings which he described as metaphysical works, of which Casement to Infinity is one.

Nicholas Hlobo, Macaleni Iintozomlambo  2010

In Macaleni iintozomlambo 2010 a tea stain on white watercolour paper forms the basis for the drawing. Meandering tentacles of pale brown are emphasised by intense orange and red stitches and further defined and textured by pale coloured ribbon sutures around the tea stain. The shape resembles an underwater creature, with several of the stitched lines ending abruptly, like stunted limbs. The sexual connotations of the forms, fleshy tones and slippery surfaces found in this work are confirmed by its title. Macaleni iintozomlambo refers to a traditional Xhosa belief whereby boys would throw rocks into the river before diving in naked as a sign of respect towards the river, and in order to acknowledge that they are visitors in a space that is not their own. Hlobo has cut and sewn the paper together with his signature ‘baseball’ stitch, which is not just decorative, but also very strong. The cuts in the paper are sharp and clean, determining where the ribbon sutures will be made and how they will overlap. Hlobo always titles his works in Xhosa, an Nguni language widely spoken in South Africa. Attracted to the formal qualities of the grammar, the sounds of the words, and the linguistic flexibility of Xhosa, Hlobo’s use of the language, with all its poetic idioms, proverbs, and double entendres, is as much about defining himself as it is an effort to convey difficult truths and encourage dialogue around homosexuality, male circumcision and other culturally sensitive issues.

Frances Hodgkins, Loveday and Ann: Two Women with a Basket of Flowers  1915

Frances Hodgkins came to Britain in 1901 from the confined artistic scene of New Zealand. Spending long periods in Cornwall, home to the Newlyn and St Ives Schools, and in Paris, where she taught at the Académie Colarossi, Hodgkins ploughed her own furrow. In typically individualistic style, this portrait combines the mobility of watercolour with the intensity of oil, showcasing the artist's idiosyncratic drawing and quirky sense of colour.

Gallery label, February 2010

Denzil Forrester MBE, Cottage Lover  1997

Cecil Collins, The Promise  1936

Cecil Collins often used light and darkness to symbolise the forces of good and evil. This painting depicts the world at night. It shows a section of the seashore, cut open to reveal seeds, shells and chrysalises lying below the ground. Two charges of energy erupt from the Earth’s surface and burst into the sky like radiant flowers. The ‘promise’ of the title refers to the coming dawn, signaling possibilities of birth and growth. Briefly linked with Surrealism, Collins showed a closely related work at the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936.

Gallery label, January 2025