In 1928, the artist Ben Nicholson, painting in St Ives in Cornwall, ‘discovered’ the naïve paintings of Alfred Wallis, a local fisherman. Wallis’s work, and the Cornish landscape, inspired Nicholson, who was to become one of the foremost English abstract painters of the 20th century. The bulk of his early work, influenced by Cubism, consisted mainly of still lifes and landscapes, balanced arrangements of formal shapes and lines.

In 1924, Nicholson had joined the avant-garde Seven and Five Society and became its president. It was also joined in 1932 by the sculptor, Barbara Hepworth, who became Nicholson’s second wife the same year. During one of several visits to Paris in 1933, Nicholson produced white on white reliefs, using only right angles and circles. In 1935, the Seven and Five Abstract Group (as the Society was now called), mounted an all-abstract exhibition which included works by Nicholson himself, Hepworth, the sculptor Henry Moore and the painter John Piper.

In 1939, Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth returned to settle in St Ives. They were followed by fellow artists, including John Piper. Nicholson went into self-imposed exile in Switzerland in 1958 and died in 1982. He and Hepworth were divorced in 1951, but she continued to live and work in St Ives until her death in 1975.