November 11th, 1947, Mousehole by Ben Nicholson

Ben Nicolson was an English painter of abstract compositions (sometimes in low relief), landscape and still-life.  He trained as an artist in London at the Slade School of Fine Art between 1910 and 1911, where he was a contemporary of Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler and Edward Wadsworth. One of his first works was a drawing for use as the base of a poster for J.M.Barrie’s play Peter Pan. He began to be influenced by Synthetic Cubism and the primitive style of Rousseau. He met Henry Moore, Mondrian (who influenced him in the abstract) and Picasso (whose Cubism also influenced him) and he was able to incorporate these European trends into a new style of his own.