Ben Nicholson

An illustrated Autograph Letter Signed (‘Ben‘) with interesting content, written to ‘John’. Nicholson thanks his correspondent for their letter and remarks ‘I must say that for some reason we find you both very easy & enjoy your company’, further adding ‘I’m only sorry that F[elicitas Vogler, his wife from 1957-77] was feeling so lousy & not at all her lively self – something that will pass, there’s been, we now gather, a kind of walking around with flu & it’s prob. that’. The artist continues ‘Wendy [Blood] & I played a lot of my kind of t[able] t[ennis] while Victor [Pasmore] & Feli talked – she must be quite distinctly good at the normal game. I’ll send you sometime the measurements of the board – the height depends on the bounce (on the surface & thickness of the table)…..The small side shots at an acute angle off the board are dangerous against a first rate player as he easily gets there & the height of the board shld be determined by a slow shot, a full length slow drive, even the best players who can take the most appallingly fast flat shots off the wood are paralysed by this bec. it might always hit the table so that they cannot make up their mind whether to allow a bounce or a table miss & its slowness creates a slow reaction or in the middle of a fast rally no reaction at all’

To the third page of the letter Nicholson has added three drawings in his hand, one showing the trajectory of a table tennis ball across the table and the other two of small tennis table bats and balls.

Victor Pasmore (1908-1998) British artist who pioneered the development of abstract art in Great Britain in the 1940s and 1950s.

Wendy Blood (1915-2015) British artist, a member of the London Group. Wife of Pasmore from 1940.

Size: four pages, 8vo

Place and date: Porta, Ticino, Switzerland, 1st November n.y. (1960s)

Condition: Very good