Sir William Nicholson

Nude

c.1921

Not on display

Artist: Sir William Nicholson 1872–1949
Medium: Oil paint on wood
Dimensions: Support: 406 × 584 mm
frame: 570 × 753 × 88 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased with assistance from the Knapping Fund 1940
Reference: N05084

Display caption

Nicholson painted very few nudes, perhaps three others only. He had been to art schools which were not especially committed to life studies, unlike the Slade School, and his pictures do not often include large scale figures. In addition his subjects were very personal, in that his creativity was not in inventing new subjects but in choosing them from real things around him. This study of the nude was not exhibited in his lifetime.

Gallery label, October 1997

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Catalogue entry

N05084 NUDE c. 1921

Inscr. ‘Nicholson’ b.l. and ‘N.’ t.r. and, on back, ‘Nude. WN’.
Oil on panel, 16×23 (41×58·5).
Purchased from the artist through the Matthiesen Gallery (Knapping Fund) 1940.
Lit: Browse, 1956, p.81.

One of the artist's very few nudes; the model was the artist's second wife Edith, whom he married in 1919 and from whom he separated in the early 1930s (letters from Miss Lillian Browse, 17 July 1958, and Miss Marguerite Steen, 22 July 1958).

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II