A WINDOW onto Winifred Nicholson's love for Cumberland - its people and its timeless landscape, flowers and farms - has opened at Abbot Hall Art Gallery.

Acclaimed as one of Britain's foremost 20th century painters, Winifred died 35 years ago and this major summer show celebrates her creativity.

It has been carefully curated by her grandson, Jovan Nicholson, who explained: "At the moment there is an increasing recognition of Winifred Nicholson’s importance and also a growing interest in her work, both among the general public and artists.

" 'Winifred Nicholson in Cumberland' will also be the first museum exhibition to concentrate solely on the paintings she made in Cumbria, and will break fresh ground as many of the paintings are from previously unseen private collections."

More than 40 paintings made in Cumberland, where the artist spent much of her life, have been gathered for the Kendal exhibition. It promises to explore her fondness for Cumberland in greater detail than ever before, and is divided broadly into three parts - Bankshead in the 1920s and 1930s, Boothby and the Lake District post war, and Bankshead again for the last two decades of her life.

Having married fellow artist Ben Nicholson, in 1920, the couple moved to Bankshead, a house situated on Hadrian’s Wall. Winifred was at the forefront of modern painting in Britain during this decade and made paintings such as Bankshead Flowers in an Alabaster Vase that explored her ideas about colour.

"My paintings talk in colour and any of the shapes are there to express colour but not outline," she explained. "The flowers are sparks of light, built of and thrown out into the air as rainbows are thrown, in an arc."

Early during the Second World War, Winifred moved to her parents’ house at Boothby, not far from Bankshead, and this was to be her base for the next 20 years. While at Boothby, she made many trips to the Lake District, painting at Ullswater, Borrowdale, Cockley Moor, Skiddaw and the Duddon Valley. She also painted at St Bees Head looking towards the Isle of Man, the Solway, Walton Moss and the Eden Valley. She delighted in stone circles and her rarely seen painting of Long Meg and Her Daughters features in this show.

During the 60s and 70s, Winifred returned to Bankshead and made paintings looking from her house towards the North Pennines, often during the winter. She had always explored and experimented with colour, and in the last few years of her life she began to make paintings inspired by the use of a prism.

She wrote: "I found out what flowers know, how to divide the colours as prisms do … and in so doing giving the luminosity and brilliance of pure colour."

- Until October 15, www.abbothall.org.uk