William Nicholson (1872–1949)

 

 

Simon Martin and Melanie Vandenbrouck, eds, William Nicholson, Pallant House Gallery, ISBN 9781869827649, £35, pp176, 140 col & bw
Catalogue of the exhibition ‘William Nicholson’, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, 22 November 2025–10 May 2026

 

 

 

 

 

Adrian Clark

 

 

 

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, under the inspired leadership of Simon Martin, has a long history of promoting British artists whose reputations have been in danger of slipping. It does this so well that, in many cases, one emerges from one of its shows with an uplifted spirit. For the curators there are not content to dig out the well-known works and leave it to them to retell a story; they regularly produce lesser-known pictures which support their case that the artist in question is deserving of even greater attention.

It is debatable whether Sir William Nicholson is in any real sense overlooked as an important artist; rather it could be said that his reputation constantly merits revisiting as time passes and context improves. Now, with the 20th century long gone, the British artists who flourished in that period (he, of course, born in 1872, also worked in the previous century) can be more easily compared with each other; the fads and special pleadings which accompanied and unduly enhanced some reputations being no longer so prevalent.

Nevertheless, it remains a dangerous game trying to weigh up and compare artistic reputations. Some artists sought to promote themselves deliberately and effectively; getting them back in perspective with those who did not is challenging. The interplay of self-promotion, quality or skill, luck, dealer support, fashion, and market prices makes for a heady brew and balancing these areas is problematic.

Nicholson was, in my view, a great artist. His reputational challenge is caused by his refusal to accommodate artistic modernity. He had no interest in Surrealism or Cubism and so on. Does this diminish his status? No, but it inevitably places him outside the mainstream of modernist art history, which can purport to assess and value the work of his son, Ben Nicholson, but not that of his more talented father.

The case for his greatness needs to focus on those areas where his skills were sublime, in his landscapes and still-lifes, rather than following him too closely around his widespread career. He was clearly, as a matter of artistic skill, supremely talented. He could turn his hand to all sorts of artistic production, not only well but brilliantly. But it does not help his reputation to suggest that he was a sort of latter-day Leonardo da Vinci or a competitor of Picasso. Those areas in which his work was brilliant are enough to found his status as one of the most significant British artists of the twentieth century (he died in 1947).

The book is the catalogue for the exhibition and the contributions of some of the curatorial team show the talent which Simon Martin has at his disposal in Chichester. He sets the tone of the book with an excellent introduction to Nicholson and his work. He is unfailingly supportive of the work, but not in such an exaggerated way as to provoke a reaction. Those approaching Nicholson’s work for the first time, or with limited understanding of its range or claim to greatness, will find this a good start.

Other contributions cover different aspects of the man and his oeuvre. It is always worth reading what Stephen Calloway has to say about something and his chapter on the artist’s careful curation of his own image is novel and persuasive. Nicholson knew how he wanted to appear and took great care to adopt the image that he chose on every formal occasion. He was quite regularly photographed throughout his adult life and as he reached maturity he favoured a dandyish, Regency image which in some way reflected his personality. In this, if not in his painting style, he was being remarkably modern, not so much in the image itself but in his care to foster it.

For my taste, the contributions to the book that focus on Nicholson’s portraiture, his still-lifes and his landscapes reach to the heart of the matter. Nicholson needs to convince the modern reader and viewer of his significance in these areas if his reputation is to carry forward to a high place in the 20th-century British art world. I have no doubt that he does, which perhaps renders me unable to criticise what is written here. For me, the supreme achievements of Nicholson are the still-lifes depicting metal. His ability to create an image of the shine on metal places him, in artistic terms, in a tiny category of artists, not simply from the 20th century but from many earlier artistic places and periods. At one point the name of Chardin is mentioned and it is fair to say that Nicholson can stand the comparison. In this book, The Lustre Bowl (fig. 100), The Silver Casket (fig. 98), and The Brass Canister (fig. 111) are exquisitely reproduced.

The landscapes demonstrate how brilliant Nicholson was technically. He achieves his images with what appears to be no painterly effort at all and yet every stroke of the brush has been deployed with consummate care and precision. His landscapes are bare and elegant, the sky blending with the earth seamlessly and skilfully.

For me what would have made a good book even better would have been an attempt at an historiographical treatment of Nicholson’s reputation: how he was regarded during his life and subsequently, with examples of unfairness and fashion in the critical responses picked out and challenged. An artist like this needs strong champions to survive and flourish amid all the hagiographies applied to certain lesser-skilled artists. Critical ignorance or prejudice needs to be taken head on. Well, that is for another day.

In the meantime, it is a pleasure to finish on a note of congratulation on the production qualities of this book: good typeface, paper, and reproductions make it an excellent book to handle. The gallery has set itself a high hurdle for its future productions.