Paintings created on Eigg by celebrated British artist to be auctioned

‘Rhododendrons, Eigg (Pink Rhododendrons)’ is valued at between £25,000 and £35,000 and ‘Sound of Rum from Bay of Laig, Isle of Eigg (The Singing Sands)’ is estimated at between £15,000 and £20,000, were created 30 years apart. 

Both paintings were exhibited at The National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh in 2003 and toured to Duff House in Banff and An Tuireann Arts Centre on Skye in 2004. The paintings also spent five years on long-term loan to Pier Arts Centre in Stromness between 2019 and this year. 

The paintings, which are said to epitomise the artist’s love for Scotland – and in particular the Hebrides – and feature in the fine art auctioneer’s MODERN MADE: Modern, Post-War and Contemporary Art, Design, Craft and Studio Ceramics sale, which will take place over two days live in London and online.

READ MORE: New exhibition is a fascinating – and free – snapshot of Scotland’s story

Nicholson married the English artist Ben Nicholson in 1920 and they had three children. The two paintings were acquired from her by their elder son, designer Jake (Jacob) Nicholson, who held onto 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. They stayed on Eigg and Canna and also in Sandaig on the mainland. There, they rented naturalist and author Gavin Maxwell’s cottage, which he immortalised as Camusfèarna in his bestselling Ring of Bright Water trilogy. Its title came from the first line of Raine’s poem The Marriage of Psyche.

One of the four Small Isles, Eigg lies 12 miles off Mallaig on Scotland’s west coast, just south of the Isle of Skye. Some three decades passed between Nicholson’s first trip to Eigg with Raine, in the summer of 1950, and her last, in the spring of 1980, with her artist daughter, Kate Nicholson.

Raine had idyllic memories of their 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.”

Winifred Nicholson painting Rhododendrons, Eigg in the Gatekeeper’s Cottage on Eigg in 1980. (Image: Donald Wilkinson)

‘Sound of Rum from Bay of Laig, Isle of Eigg (The Singing Sands)’ reveals Nicholson’s deep connection with the Scottish sea – and landscape, as well as her sensitivity to the gentle, shimmering light unique to the area. 

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 people walk upon it.

Nicholson and her daughter spent two weeks on Eigg in May 1980, where they stayed in a cottage with panoramic views across the sea to the mainland. Rhododendrons, Eigg is infused with colour and joy and was painted with the aid of a prism. 

This splits light into the colour spectrum, confirming Nicholson’s theory that colour lies not only over objects, but also on their rims. Her series of prismatic paintings, of which Rhododendrons, Eigg is one of the finest, were extremely important to the artist.

Commenting on the paintings, Alice Strang, Associate Director at Lyon & Turnbull, said: “These works are poems in paint about Scotland, by a leading British woman artist. They celebrate a remote and special place which inspired Winifred Nicholson in her fifties and her eighties. 

“She was drawn repeatedly to the beauty of the Hebrides, where the ever-changing weather causes rainbows to occur more frequently than on the mainland, a phenomenon of wonder for an artist fascinated by the possibilities of light and colour in nature.”