WINIFRED NICHOLSON (BRITISH 1893-1981) SOUND OF RUM FROM BAY OF LAIG, ISLE OF EIGG (THE SINGING SANDS), EARLY 1950s oil on board 58cm x 83.5cm (22 ¾in x 32 7/8in) Acquired from the Artist by her elder son, the late Jake (Jacob) Nicholson (1927-2003) and thence by descent to the present owner Exhibited: Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Winifred Nicholson in Scotland, 10 July - 7 September 2003 and touring to Duff House, Banff, 8 November 2003 – 18 January 2004 and An Tuireann, Skye, 24 January – 20 March 2004;Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, on long-loan 2019 - 2024.Literature: Rhododendrons, Eigg (Pink Rhododendrons) and Sound of Rum from Bay of Laig, Isle of Eigg (The Singing Sands) epitomise Winifred Nicholson’s love for Scotland and in particular the Hebridean island of Eigg. They were acquired from the artist by her son, the designer Jake (Jacob) Nicholson (1927-2003), who cherished them for the rest of his life.Nicholson worked in Scotland repeatedly in the late 1940s and early 1950s, often accompanied by her friend, the poet Kathleen Raine (1908-2003). They stayed on the islands of Eigg and Canna and also in Sandaig on the mainland; there they rented Gavin Maxwell’s cottage, which he immortalised as Camusfèarna in his Ring of Bright Water trilogy.Eigg is just five miles long by five miles wide and is situated twelve miles from Mallaig on the mainland, just south of Skye. Some three decades passed between Nicholson’s first trip there, in the summer of 1950 with Raine and her last, in the Spring of 1980, with her daughter, the artist Kate Nicholson (1929-2019). Raine had idyllic memories of her and Nicholson’s first experience of the island, later recalling: ‘The Factor [of Eigg] was previously employed by Winifred’s father...and he allowed us to camp during the day in an uninhabited cottage where Winifred painted and I wrote, or walked off gathering flowers, many of which Winifred painted…We boiled water and made ourselves cups of tea from time to time and enjoyed the illusion of living there…On our first visit to Eigg I remember it was sultry summer weather and we walked to the top of the island.’ (Quoted in Alice Strang, Winifred Nicholson in Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2003, p.47)In her turn, whilst there Nicholson wrote to Jake exclaiming ‘Kathleen has written some magical poems. I’ve done about 16 pictures here, how good I don’t know until I get back to look at them against other things.’ (quoted in Strang, op.cit., p.48).Sound of Rum from Bay of Laig, Isle of Eigg reveals Nicholson’s deep connection with the Scottish sea- and landscape and her sensitivity to the gentle, shimmering light unique to the area. The bay, on Eigg’s west coast, commands fine views over the sea to Rum, whose Cuillin peaks are seen emerging from diaphanous clouds. There is a sense of island remoteness and purity. This painting is also known as The Singing Sands after the nearby beach of Camas Sgiotaig, where in certain conditions the sand makes noises when walked upon. This magical natural phenomenon has been explained by Geoffrey Grigson thus:‘Dry blown sand around the coast may emit an unexpected sound, slight or pronounced, when you walk over it or drag a stick across it. Off the dunes and below the high-tide mark, water is drawn in and held between the grains of sand by capillary action. The grains do not touch. Without this watev r cushion dry grains rub together when they are moved, and if they are of the same shape and size they jerk against or across each other as they do so, vibrating and “singing”.’ (Geoffrey Grigson, The Shell Country Alphabet, from Apple Trees to Stone Circles, How to Understand the British Countryside, Particular Books, London, 2009, p.344)When creating the work, Nicholson positioned herself behind and above the white foreshore in order to embrace the curve of the bay. Undulating ground, cliff and hill combine to create an awareness of natural rhythm, heightened by the edge of the wave at the boundary between water and beach. The sky holds muted sunshine as well as a suggestion of something more powerful. The delicate palette, based on blue, green and grey, carries an atmosphere of peace, beauty and a sense of wonder. Nicholson and Kate spent two weeks on Eigg in May 1980, accompanied at first by the artist Donald Wilkinson (b.1937) and his family and secondly by the artists Valerie Thornton (1931-91) and Michael Chase (1915-2001). This time she stayed in the Gamekeeper’s Cottage. As Alice Strang has explained:‘The Gamekeeper’s Cottage is the highest house on the island, with panoramic views across the sea to the mainland. Due to the atmospheric conditions in the area, rainbows occur there with unusual frequency. From an early age Winifred had been fascinated by them, as they were a natural display of the splitting of light into the colour spectrum.’ (Strang, op.cit., p.50) This phenomenon is celebrated in Rhododendrons, Eigg. A painting infused with colour and joy, it was created with the aid of a prism that Nicholson had recently acquired. Her series of prismatic paintings, of which Rhododendrons, Eigg is one of the finest, were extremely important to the artist. Her grandson, Jovan Nicholson has explained, quoting her:‘The way Winifred used a prism is straightforward: when you look through a prism the objects you see are rimmed with rainbow colours. “[My] prism is in a back pocket in my purse. I can put my hand into my pocket and pull it out whenever I want to see a rainbow. For the prism shows us rainbows everywhere.” She valued her prism as “a very little pot of gold”, for she “found out what flowers know, how to divide the colours as prisms do, onto longer and shorter wavelengths, and in so doing giving the luminosity and brilliance of pure colours…in the ordered sequence of the octave of colour.”’ (Jovan Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson: Liberation of Colour, Philip Wilson Publishers, London, 2016, p 32)Moreover, Nicholson was drawn to paint flowers for much of her career, partly as a way to explore her theory that ‘colour is not just a coat over objects – it lies on the rim of objects between one form and the neighbouring form or space.’ (quoted in Judith Collins, Winifred Nicholson, The Tate Gallery, London, 1987, p.31). She sensed that flowers:‘…create colours out of the light of the sun, refracted by the rainbow prism…The flowers are sparks of light, built of and thrown out into the air as rainbows are thrown, in an arc…My paint brush always gives a tremor of pleasure when I let it paint a flower…to me they are the secret of the cosmos.’ (quoted in ed. Andrew Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson: Unknown Colour, Faber & Faber, London, 1987, pp. 239 & 216)The rainbows that shimmer amidst the titular flowers in Rhododendrons, Eigg heighten the viewer’s awareness of their delicate beauty, as well as that of the patterned cloth on which they are presented and the expanse of their natural surroundings. These are more sensed and glimpsed than simply seen, in an image in which an element of spirituality is combined with heartfelt optimism. We are grateful to Jovan Nicholson for his help in researching these paintings.
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