In 1978, Nicholson wrote to his old friend Jim Ede ‘I’ve been off work for 2 long (too small a studio) & then suddenly have had a burst of work – many think the best so far that I’ve done. People will ask “how it is done” & I say if I knew that then I couldn’t do it.’ Over fifty of these works on paper were included in an exhibition at Waddington and Tooth Galleries, London, in October that year. Though 1978 (mountain scene) was not exhibited until two years later, at the Waddington Galleries in 1980, it nevertheless belongs to the same creative flourishing. Given that Nicholson’s only travel in 1977 and ‘78 was to Yorkshire, it is possible that this ‘mountain scene’ (referred to in the subtitle of the work) is in fact the gentle hills of the Yorkshire dales. Having arrived organically at an abstract mode in the early 1930s, still-life subjects began to re-emerge in Nicholson’s Cornish work starting in 1943. In a letter to his brother-in-law John Summerson, the artist referred to this development as ‘the dog returning to its own vomit’. These works typically integrated a still-life arrangement of mugs and glasses on a ledge with a landscape beyond, viewed through the window. This theme provided Nicholson with a continuing source of ideas until the end of his life. 1978 (mountain scene) demonstrates Nicholson’s continuing pictorial subtlety, interspersing the horizon line with the outlines of the table and creating a visual echo between the lie of the landscape and the rounded contours of the glass or ceramic cup. The paper which Nicholson used for works like 1978 (mountain scene) was always pre-prepared in batches. 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. Once a subject or a view was decided upon Nicholson would search his collection of sheets, washed in different ways and cut in different shapes, to find a piece of paper that suited the immediate needs of the work at hand. This well-practiced 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.