SIR WILLIAM NICHOLSON NPS IS
Newark-on-Trent 1872 - 1949 Blewbury, Berkshire
Ref: CD 132
Nancy in a feather hat (The artist's daughter)
Signed and indistinctly dated lower left: Nicholson 1910
Oil on canvas: 30 ¼ x 25 ¼ in / 76.8 x 64.1 cm
Frame size: 39 ¼ x 34 ¼ in / 99.7 x 87 cm
In a reeded Whistler style carved and gilded oak frame
Provenance:
Goupil Gallery, London;
9th Duke of Marlborough (Charles Spencer-Churchill 1871-1934) and returned;
Christie’s London, 7th December 1917, lot 21, as Portrait of the artist’s daughter (260gns);
Frederick Leverton Harris MP (1864-1926);
Private collection, Scotland;
J & R Edmiston Auctioneers, Glasgow, 26th March 1929, lot 36, as The Artist’s Daughter
(The feathered hat) (£100 16s);
Ian McNicol, Glasgow
Christie’s London, 1940-41 (catalogue untraced)
Piccadilly Gallery, London;
JE (Jack) Posnansky and by descent to his daughter Gillian Raffles, London
Exhibited:
London, The Goupil Gallery Salon, October-December 1910, no.108 (£315)
Venice, XIV Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Città di Venezia, April-October 1924, no.53, as Ritratto di ragazza con berretto piumato
Literature:
‘The Goupil Gallery’, The Globe, 26th October 1910, p.11
‘Art Notes’, Illustrated London News, 29th October 1910, p.662
Martin Hardie, ‘The World of Art: The Goupil Gallery Salon’, The Queen: The Lady’s Newspaper, 29th October 1910, p.792
‘The Goupil Salon’, The Westminster Gazette, 31st October 1910, p.3
Hugh Stokes, ‘The Goupil Gallery Salon’, Country Life, vol. XXVIII, no.722, 5th November 1910, p.635
‘Art and Anecdote’, The Ladies’ Field, vol. LII, no.664, 3rd December 1910, p.6
Lewis Hind, ‘Exhibitions’, The Art Journal, December 1910, p. 359, illus. p.383.
AL Baldry, ‘The Paintings of William Nicholson’, The Studio, vol. LIII, no.219, June 1911, pp.8-9, illus.
Patricia Reed, William Nicholson: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Modern Art Press /Yale University Press, London 2011, no.178, illus. in colour p.172
This painting will soon be exhibited at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, as part of their forthcoming exhibition on the art of William Nicholson, 22nd November 2025-10th May 2026.
Nancy, the third child and only daughter of the artists William Nicholson and Mabel Pryde, born at Chaucer’s House, Woodstock on the 13th September 1899, was a favourite model for both parents. One of William’s first depictions of her, Nancy with ribbons, 1901, was also the first of his works to be acquired by a public collection, when it was purchased by the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna di Ca’Pesaro, Fondazione Musei Civici, Venice in 1905. Nearly ten years after her first portrait, Nancy (aged ten) again confronts the viewer with graceful self-possession. But in the present work, she stands in three-quarter profile shining out of the darkness in a stunning apricot-coloured, ostrich feather hat and blue shawl over a white dress. Her right hand rests on a wooden table next to a small bouquet of flowers, possibly Nigella, love-in-a-mist, whose colours compliment the sitter’s clothing and youthful complexion. First exhibited at the Goupil Gallery Salon in 1910 to universal acclaim, the painting was also part of a special exhibition of Nicholson’s work shown at the Venice Biennale in 1924.
Nicholson’s flair for portraiture, particularly of children whom he depicted as individuals without sentimentality, had already gained him notable success and during this auspicious period he counted a London home at 38 Mecklenburgh Square (see the Nicholson family portrait by William Orpen, A Bloomsbury family, 1908, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh), a studio at the Pheasantry in Chelsea and a country house at Rottingdean amongst his possessions.
