Wilhelmina Barns-Graham created the drawing illustrated here in the summer of 1954. She and her husband, David Lewis, travelled to Italy ostensibly to visit the Venice Biennale where Ben Nicholson was exhibiting, but also to tour Tuscany. Lynne Green noted that Barns-Graham bought her large, heavy drawing board with her and drew incessantly. They travelled to Florence (and from there to Fiesole where our drawing was created and also to Pisa) before moving on to Sienna and Chiusure. David Lewis wrote of the trip that: “Willie would begin drawing – would begin discovering with endless patience the structure of the landscape, the forms and the tensions and rhythms of the hills…. (and that she had done) several very big and fine and tender drawings: some of them are quite the best drawings she has ever done….Italy has certainly been a very big experience for us.” While in Italy, Barns-Graham met Peggy Guggenheim and viewed her collection, dined out with Nicholson and met the great and the good of the Venetian beau monde. She also learnt that she had been awarded the Italian Government International Scholarship which was administered in the UK by the British Council. The significant award, which may well have been supported behind the scenes by Nicholson, allowed her to return to Italy in the following year. Although Barns-Graham was, and will continue to be, associated primarily with Cornwall and Scotland, she was always a devoted internationalist and her best work was often inspired by her frequent travels beyond the UK.

Barns-Graham was an early arrival in St Ives, moving down to the town shortly after the arrival of Ben
Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth at the outbreak of World War Two. At this time, her canvases were largely
figurative, but by the late 1940s she had developed an abstract style which displayed the admiration she had
for Nicholson's work. Her early paintings and reliefs also bear comparison the work of John Wells and Peter
Lanyon - all of whom were active exhibitors with the St Ives Society of Artists until the modernist schism of
1949 that ultimately led to the foundation of the Penwith Society (of which Barns-Graham was a founder
member).

With her modernist credentials now assured, she began showing at some of the exhibitions and galleries
that help defined the emergent post-war abstract movement. Her first solo exhibition in London was held at
the Redfern Gallery in January 1952 after an introduction by Patrick Heron and she exhibited at Gimpel Fils in
1951 as part of a survey of British Abstract Art.

Barns-Graham deserves to be seen as a pioneer of post-war British abstraction. Compared to artists with
whom see exhibited and worked beside, the prices for her seminal works are relatively inexpensive. Her
work is included in any serious exhibition covering the art of the period, not least the inaugural exhibition of
the Tate St Ives in 1993. She is represented in most if not all of the best public collections of Modern British
art, including major institutions such as the Tate, V&A Museum and the National Gallery of Modern Art in
Edinburgh.

Waterhouse & Dodd formally represent the Barns-Graham Trust. We held a major survey show of the artist’s
work at our London gallery in 2017. We have shown her work at many significant domestic and international
fairs including TEFAF Maastricht, Expo Chicago, British Art Fair, Art Miami and Masterpiece London.