William Nicholson: modern or not?

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William Nicholson. Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings

By Patricia Reed

The British artist William Nicholson (1872–1949), has always been difficult to place. He resisted any close association as a painter with any art groups or movements, and never joined an exhibiting society, even though the Royal Academy might have seemed an obvious home.  He was pleased to remain an individual, an independent: although his work always remained within the conventions of figurative naturalism, it retained a distinctive sense of his own identity. 

Whilst recognizably an artist of the early 20th century, he was unaffected by the avant-garde currents that swept through that period;  he was as ‘modern’, and no more, as any follower of Whistler. He had his own brief moment of stylistic advance in the field of graphic art as a designer of books and posters during the 1890s.  We might well consider the (probably prejudicial) view of his son Ben Nicholson, that he remained essentially a figure of the Edwardian era.   He was successful in his profession, generally in demand, very sociable outside as well as inside artistic circles and was recognized with a knighthood in his sixties.

With all this being said, it is somewhat surprising to see the extent to which his work, in particular the still lifes and flower subjects, still holds such an attraction today and this magnificent book provides an unparalleled opportunity to get to know the range of his ways of working and the quiet qualities of individual paintings.

This catalogue raisonné, with over 800 colour reproductions of the oil paintings, is the fruit of over 20 years’ research by Patricia Reed.  This is an example of the diligent scholarship and attention to detail that is an essential element of the work of the art historian.  In addition to affirming the authenticity and supplying precise descriptions of works, Reed also attaches invaluable notes about sitters, locations and biographical associations.  We learn, for example, concerning a virtuosic impression of a bibulous banquet, City Dinner 1934, at which Nicholson was a guest, the precise vintages of the wine served on the occasion!

In an opening essay, Wendy Baron  places Nicholson securely in the wider context of his British art contemporaries. Merlin James writes with an artist’s knowledgeable insights, identifying in Nicholson, ‘a higher consciousness of things – their character, form, qualities, style, structure and substance’.  He correctly identifies an economy of means as the essence of his technique, claiming that Nicholson rarely employed more than three pigments plus white and sometimes black in any given painting.   The still life Rose Lustre from 1921 is an example, with its simple subject of a marbled pink goblet standing on a couple of books. Yet Nicholson, who rarely took this economy of means to its extreme, produced a picture that challenges our perception of the flatness of the picture plane with an invocation in a darkened mirror of the studio space inhabited by himself and his companion artist. 

Portraiture made up a significant part of his production and he responded very well to the vitality and openness of children and young people; the barely disguised teenage mischief and fidgeting of The Misses Margaret and Diana Law brings this 1920s domestic snapshot poignantly to life. But many of his portraits of grey-suited male worthies fail to leave us with much of a hint of personality.  He enjoyed one opportunity for exuberant picture making, however, when he presented Lord Harewood in his Masonic regalia as Provincial Grand Master.

While it is not obvious that the historical significance of William Nicholson’s place in British art is immediately due for any substantial reconsideration, this engrossing and monumental study provides all the encouragement and material that would be needed to hasten that process.

William Nicholson. Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings by Patricia Reedis published by Modern Art Press in partnership with Yale University Press, 2011.672 pp., 640 colour/90 mono illus. ISBN 978-0-300-17054-2