In May 1967, Nicholson and a group of friends spent several weeks sailing by yacht around the Greek Islands in the Aegean Sea and skimming the Turkish coast. The artist found Patmos particularly beautiful, with ‘lovely inlets of sea & white, Cubist, Greek cottages with, on a rising hill above, a Crusader’s brown monastery-castle’. He later recalled in a letter to Naum Gabo that ‘I spent a whole morning alone [drawing] inside, only about 2 monks, & one old man sitting making necklaces out of shells – a marvellous silence in such a place.’ 1967 (chapel in Greece) is likely to be one of the drawings which Nicholson made on that occasion in Patmos. The island is reputed to be the site where John the Evangelist wrote the Book of Revelation, and Nicholson took a keen interest in the island’s combination of richly aged buildings and ecclesiastical tranquillity. The paper which Nicholson used for his drawings was always prepared in the studio before making a trip. He washed individual pieces with areas of watercolour, without any regard for what might later be depicted on the sheet. From the 1960s, he routinely started shaping the paper, creating irregular rectangles and sheets with rounded sides. A great many sheets, washed in different ways and cut in different shapes, were then carried around in a satchel. Once a subject or a view was decided upon, Nicholson cast about in the satchel to find a piece of paper that suited the immediate needs of his drawing. This well-practised method ensured a certain richness of quality and often resulted in unexpected, enlivening contrasts between the subtle watercolour wash and the line drawing which followed it. The ‘ph’ (photograph) number inscribed in red ink on the reverse belongs to the photographer which Nicholson used while living in Switzerland, Alberto Flammer. Both the frame and the backboard are Nicholson’s original materials.