July 62 (near miss)

John Russell discusses the artist's drawings in the 1963 exhibition, 'In drawing still-life he has remained largely faithful to the subjects that are among his earliest and most vivid memories: the "very beautiful striped and spotted jugs and mugs and goblets, and octagonal and hexagonal glass objects" which his father had collected ... To-day, in drawing from "beautiful" objects, Nicholson tends even more than formerly to take the object simply as a point of departure ... the individual object exists merely as an idea, or a recollection, of noble form; and the point of the drawing is the pictorial idea - the meaningful curvings and intersections which relate not to a "beautiful" jug but to every jug that has ever existed, and to the stresses and balances implicit in their construction and mutual relationships' (see J. Russell (intro.), exhibition catalogue, Ben Nicholson, Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1963, p. 10).