Ides of March

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Ides of March

Artist Ben Nicholson (British, 1894-1982)

Place of OriginEngland

Date1952

DimensionsPainting: 36 × 30 in. (91.4 × 76.2 cm)
Frame: 40 3/4 × 34 3/4 × 1 1/4 in. (103.5 × 88.3 × 3.2 cm)

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1952.90

Not on View

Label TextBen Nicholson was a key proponent of Modernism in Britain pre-World War II, and continued to be greatly influential after. He gained a wider, international reputation in 1952, the year he painted Ides of March, when he won first prize at the prestigious annual contemporary art exhibition, the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh. Austere and elegant, Nicholson’s composition of curving lines and overlapping planes can be read as non-representational, but also suggests a figure or figures. In fact, throughout his career, Nicholson freely moved back and forth from purely abstract to representational painting. What connection, if any, do you see in the painting to the title, the famous date of the assassination by stabbing of Julius Caesar?Published ReferencesToledo Museum of Art Museum News, no. 146, Summer 1953.

Lee, Katharine C., "Modern Art," Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 11, no. 4, Autumn 1968, pl. 359.

Johnson, C. B., Contemporary Art: Exploring its Roots and Development, Worcester, 1973, p. 27, repr. p. 26.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, European Paintings, Toledo, 1976, p. 118, pl. 359.

Exhibition HistoryLondon, Lefevre Gallery, Ben Nicholson, 1952, no. 60.

Cleveland Museum of Art, Paths of Abstract Art, 1960, no. 69, fig. 69.

Des Moines Art Center, Art in Western Europe: the Postwar Years 1945-1955, 1978, no. 54, repr.