During the summer of 1977, Nicholson travelled to Wharfedale in the North of England where he carried out a series of ‘amusing’ drawings of ‘horses among Yorkshire stone walls’. By that time, Nicholson was almost exclusively producing works on paper and this is one of the very few carved reliefs dating from the period. July 1977 (vertical landscape) was perhaps motivated in part by his visit to the ruins of Kirkby Priory in the previous month. The work constructs a clear relationship between figures and ground, with strong vertical elements appearing to rise up from a white, horizon-like plane at the lower edge of the work. Upright rectangular forms appear in several other, medium-scale relief works from the preceding decade. Nicholson’s titles variously connect these forms with monolithic standing stones, such as those at Carnac in Brittany, and columns of antique Mediterranean heritage. This work, however, subtitled ‘vertical landscape’, gives no clue to any specific representational content. * In March 1958, Ben Nicholson left his home and studio in St Ives for Switzerland. He settled near Lake Maggiore and began a period marked by its fluency and self-confidence. In Switzerland, he produced reliefs, landscapes and still lifes, further establishing his reputation not only as one of Britain’s leading modernists but also as an artist of international acclaim. Following a decade of awards and critical celebration, including the ‘Ulissi’ Prize at the 1954 Venice Biennale and the First International Prize for Painting at São Paulo in 1957, Nicholson was buoyed with enthusiasm and creative zeal. His move to mainland Europe marked the start of a remarkable and prolific period in his exceptional oeuvre. Nicholson’s work of the 1960s was shaped by an intense engagement with his surroundings: the striking landscapes and historical sites which he encountered in the Canton of Ticino, as well as those he discovered on travels to Italy, Greece, Portugal and France. Pencil drawing and carved painted relief were parallel mediums in Nicholson’s practice at the time, and he used both as vehicles of expression to capture the ‘idea’ of these newly discovered European environments. Though his work was not always representational, it was systematically related to the places he experienced. Working as a kind of equivalent, his abstract reliefs of this period suggest the weathered patina of ancient buildings. Nicholson used a direct and physical process, scratching the hard board and scraping away layers of applied paint. By roughening and incising the support and revealing underlayers of wood and colour, Nicholson composed a subtly interlocking surface notable for its rich textures. While the reliefs were composed in Nicholson’s studio, the drawings flowed directly from his encounters with life outside and were often spurred by an interest in architecture – the tympanum over a doorway, an idiosyncratic capital or the characterful silhouettes of a townscape. Much like the reliefs, the drawings developed from a pure interest in shape and line. Though the drawings are artistic achievements in their own right, they helped Nicholson to distil his idea of a place and communicate it in the abstract, poetic qualities of his carved reliefs.