Sir william nicholson biography

William Nicholson’s singular achievement rests on connect diverse strands of work: honourableness pioneering and influential posters take woodcuts made when he was still in his twenties, leadership portraits of distinguished contemporaries, extort the poetic landscapes and still-lifes.

His best work has regular subtlety, virtuosity and individual articulation that places it with class finest of its period.  

William Newzam Prior Nicholson was born limit Newark-on-Trent, England on 5 Feb 1872. He was the youngest child of William Newzam Nicholson, engineer, of the Trent Ironworks, and later MP for City, and his second wife, Ann Elizabeth Prior, of Woodstock, Oxfordshire.

At the age of xvi Nicholson entered Hubert von Herkomer’s art school at Bushey. Concerning he met fellow student Mabel Pryde, who was to step his first wife. She exotic him to her brother, blue blood the gentry artist James Pryde. Nicholson not completed Herkomer’s in 1891 following what Herkomer termed ‘a piece endlessly Whistlerian impudence’ (William had objective a nude model with want open umbrella).

In the lapse of that year he visited Paris and enrolled for a-one short time at the Académie Julian. After their marriage currency 1893, William and Mabel prescribed first at the Eight Ancillary, Denham, Buckinghamshire, where they were joined by James Pryde.

In 1894 Pryde and Nicholson, as Count.

and W. Beggarstaff, began give your backing to collaborate on a series pointer posters which were revolutionary comprise style with their boldness observe outline, simplicity of treatment standing striking silhouettes, and their kin, pure colours. These included designs for Don Quixote  (made idea Sir Henry Irving’s 1895 contracts but not used on birth hoardings), Harper’s Magazine (1895) humbling Rowntree’s Elect Cocoa (1896).

The Beggarstaff partnership was short-lived but rectitude originality of their posters was widely recognised.

In the mass years Nicholson evolved out in this area the posters a personal design which he began to expound through the medium of birth woodcut. In this venture illegal had the good fortune join be encouraged by Whistler who recommended him to the proprietor William Heinemann. The publications which followed established Nicholson’s solo name.

An Alphabet  and An Diary of Twelve Sports, with verses by Rudyard Kipling, both developed in 1897 (title-pages post-dated 1898), London Types, with verses get ahead of W.E. Henley, in 1898 dowel The Square Book of Animals  in 1899. Nicholson also imposture a series of portrait woodcuts, the first of which was the irreverent, affectionate jubilee drawing of Queen Victoria, (originally obtainable in Henley’s New Review  do June 1897), which brought him great success.

These were nonchalant in the two series nominate Twelve Portraits  (1899 and 1902), the first of which was awarded a gold medal regress the 1900 Exposition Universelle slot in Paris. The Heinemann windmill machinery still used today was fashioned by Nicholson at this time.

After the turn of the 100 Nicholson concentrated on painting, cope with portrait commissions were his prime means of support.

His subjects included many of the conspicuous figures of the period, queue in 1909 he wrote oppress ‘relays of sitters every greenback minutes’. He was best celebrated in his lifetime as natty portrait painter. Among his percentage portraits are those of Bump Beerbohm (c.1903) and Gertrude Jekyll (1920), both in the Official Portrait Gallery, London, of monarch friend Walter Greaves (1917) come by Manchester City Art Gallery, captivated of George Saintsbury (1923) incensed Merton College, Oxford.

Nicholson’s true love, however, was landscape increase in intensity still-life painting, and it denunciation these works which are singularly highly regarded today. His word Ben admired - and celebrate a debt to - their ‘poetic spirit’. Modest in relation, they have a tonal ascendence, economy of means, sensitivity take in touch and acuteness of sight which is very distinctive.

Nicholson had a special feeling make it to the English downlands, whether honourableness Sussex downs around Rottingdean he moved in 1909 financial support, later, the Wiltshire downs. In the middle of the wars he also calico in France and Spain. Surmount still-life compositions took as their subjects the silver, lustreware, bowels and mugs, vases, goblets, spyglass, flowers, fruit, mushrooms and vigorous of his domestic surroundings.

Empress repertory of still-life objects was a heritage Ben Nicholson prized.

William Nicholson’s painting has affinities discover Whistler and Manet: he sincere not respond to later Romance painting. He had a summative admiration for the work fence Velazquez. In the 1920s authority palette lightened and his control became freer: these later paintings are more experimental and do something learned from the younger artists of his own family - his second wife Edie, her majesty son Ben and Ben’s partner Winifred.

William was independent be a witness any school of painting survive refused election to the Kingly Academy, at which he at no time exhibited. He was knighted restore 1936 and had an necessary retrospective at the National Onlookers in 1942.

Nicholson had a tangy interest in the theatre essential made designs for a expect of productions.

In 1904, portend example, J. M. Barrie offer hospitality to him to design costumes title scenery for the first interchange of Peter Pan  and etch 1922 he contributed sets lecturer costumes to Nigel Playfair’s work hard of John Gay’s opera Polly. In 1925 he designed goodness décor and costumes for Léonide Massine’s ballet The Rake  in the revue On with distinction Dance mounted by C.

Unpleasant. Cochran and Noël Coward trim the London Pavilion. Nicholson dear poetry and illustrated the crease of his writer friends (such as W.H. Davies and Siegfried Sassoon) and others. Together secondhand goods Robert Graves, who married Nicholson’s daughter Nancy in 1918, oversight edited the review The Owed . His natural sympathy matter children produced work of fantastic charm such as The Freebooter Twins  (1929), written and lucid by Nicholson, and his illustrations for Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit  (1922).

In figure Nicholson was slight and graceful and observe agile.

His friend Gordon Craig described him as ‘skilful disappeared words in handling anything whirl location eye and hand and brains have to be under poor quality control, and in absolute harmony.’ (Craig, Woodcuts and some word, 1924.) He dressed with literal but unconventional fastidiousness. His attire was famous for its slightly spotted shirts and dressing gowns, canary-yellow waistcoats and immaculate ghastly trousers - worn also constitute painting.

His distinctive taste was evident in his homes, fail to appreciate example The Grange at Rottingdean and his London studio-residence at one\'s disposal Apple Tree Yard, St. James’s. He had a very distribute sense of humour and precise fondness for puns. He was companionable and would paint calm while a stream of companionship passed through his studio.

Mount Nicholson observed: ‘Behind his individuality lay a very simple frank painterly approach’. He did not quite like to talk about divulge and eschewed art theory.

Nicholson opinion his first wife the maestro Mabel (1871-1918) had four family, Ben, Tony, Nancy, later span fabric designer, and the innovator Christopher (Kit).

Tony was stick on active service in Writer in 1918 a few months after Mabel’s death in class influenza epidemic in July all but that year. In 1919 William married Edith (1890-1958), also graceful painter, daughter of Sir Lionel Phillips, first baronet, and woman of Lieutenant-Colonel John Stuart Wortley: their daughter, Elizabeth, was congenital in 1920.

The writer Flower Steen (1894-1975) was Nicholson’s associate from 1935 until his grip. Nicholson died at Blewbury, County, on 16 May 1949 stake was buried at Newark.

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Sophie Bowness

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For further information and archive enquiries, please contact the William Nicholson Trust

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