Winifred Nicholson painted in many different locations including Cornwall, Wales, the Hebrides, France, Greece and North Africa, but the place she most often painted was her native Cumberland, latterly Cumbria, writing ‘I have always lived I Cumberland – the call of the curlew is my call, the tremble of the harebell is my tremble in life, the blue mist of lonely fells is my mystery, and the silver gleam when the sun does come out is my pathway.’ From the beginning of the Second World War until her father’s death in 1959 Winifred Nicholson lived at Boothby, her parents’ house, not far from Brampton, a home she found very congenial. With its open window and pink and blue hyacinths coming into flower Boothby Hyacinths hints at the optimism and sense of freshness characteristic of Winifred Nicholson’s paintings. Winifred Nicholson loved to keep spring bulbs, writing, ‘I like promise of things to come, There always turns out such unexpected and exciting things in the colourlessness of the unknown future.’ See Jovan Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson in Cumberland, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, 2016, pp.14-16, 50, for more about Winifred Nicholson and Boothby.