Winifred Nicholson

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Winifred Nicholson
Black-and-white portrait of an elderly woman, seen in profile
Nicholson in 1969, photographed by Pamela Chandler
Born
Rosa Winifred Roberts

(1893-12-21)21 December 1893
Oxford, England
Died5 March 1981(1981-03-05) (aged 87)
Carlisle, Cumbria, England
EducationByam Shaw School of Art
Known forStill-life, landscape
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1920; div. 1938)​
Children3, including Kate Nicholson
Websitewinifrednicholson.com
From Bedroom Window, Bankshead, date unknown, private collection. Typical of Nicholson's impressionist work, combining still life with landscape.
Costa Brava, 1953, Government Art Collection. A typical Nicholson landscape, from an overseas trip.

Winifred Nicholson[a] (née Roberts; 21 December 1893 – 5 March 1981) was a British painter. She was a colourist who developed a personal impressionistic style, concentrating on domestic still life objects and landscapes. She often combined the two subjects as seen in her painting From Bedroom Window, Bankshead showing a landscape viewed through a window, with flowers in a vase in the foreground.

Early life and education[edit]

Rosa Winifred Roberts was born in Oxford on 21 December 1893.[1][2][3] She was the eldest of the three children of the Liberal Party politician Charles Henry Roberts and Lady Cecilia Maude Howard, daughter of the politician George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle and activist Rosalind Howard.[1] Known as Winifred, she started painting as a teenager with her maternal grandfather George Howard, who was a capable amateur painter. He was a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, and of the Italian landscape painter Nino Costa, founder of the Etruscan School.[1]

Winifred attended the Byam Shaw School of Art in London from about 1910[1] or 1912[2] until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and again from 1918 to 1919.[1]

In 1919, she travelled with her father, who had been Under-Secretary of State for India, to Burma (now Myanmar), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and India. This long trip had a significant impact upon her work as it was when 'light came alive' for her, including 'how eastern art uses lilac to create sunlight' which infulenced her work from then on.[4]

Personal life[edit]

On 4 November 1920, Winifred Roberts married the artist Ben Nicholson, the son of the painters Mabel Pryde and Sir William Newzam Prior Nicholson.[1][5] She took her husband's surname. The young couple bought a villa in Switzerland, the Villa Capriccio near the village of Castagnola on the north shore of Lake Lugano in Ticino.

They spent the winters in Switzerland and the summers in Britain, painting still-lifes and landscapes.[2] In 1924, Winifred Nicholson bought Bankshead, a farmhouse built on an ancient Roman castle forming part of Hadrian's Wall, at Banks, not far from the town of Brampton in Cumberland,[1] and close to her maternal family seat, Naworth Castle.[2]

In 1924, Nicholson, who believed that she was unable to conceive, joined the Christian Science movement, which was in vogue in Britain at that time.[6]: 16  She and Ben eventually had three children: Jake was born in 1927,[6]: 17  Kate in July 1929, and Andrew in 1931.[6]: 19  By the time of Kate's birth, there were tensions in the marriage, and these were exacerbated by the suicide of their close friend, the painter Kit Wood, in August 1930. In 1931, Ben met Barbara Hepworth – whom he later married – and he and Winifred separated.[5][3] In 1932, Winifred moved with her three children to Paris, and from then until 1936 Ben often visited them there, sometimes with Hepworth. The marriage ended in divorce in 1938, and Ben married Hepworth in November of the same year.[5]

Winifred Nicholson died in Cumbria on 5 March 1981.[1]

Reception[edit]

Significant exhibitions of her works have taken place at the Tate Gallery (1987), at the Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle, Cumbria, at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge and at the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh.[citation needed] Her auction record of £200,000 was set at Sotheby's auction house in London in November 2016 for her 1928 oil and coloured pencil on panel St Ives' Harbour, from David Bowie's collection – the pop star had bought the work at Christie's in 1994.[7]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Following her separation from her husband, she sometimes used the name "Winifred Dacre". "Dacre" is an old Howard family name; see Lord Carlisle.

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Judith Collins (rev.). Nicholson, (Rosa) Winifred (1893–1981). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, May 2009. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37810. (subscription required).
  2. ^ a b c d Duncan Robinson and Judith Collins. Nicholson. Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (subscription required).
  3. ^ a b Nicholson, Winifred. Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (subscription required).
  4. ^ "Winifred Nicholson: capturing the joy of colour". 2022.
  5. ^ a b c Sophie Bowness. Nicholson, Benjamin Lauder (1894–1982) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, May 2010. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31498. (subscription required).
  6. ^ a b c Virginia Button (2007). Ben Nicholson. London: Tate. ISBN 9781854376657.
  7. ^ Sotheby's: Bowie/Collector, November 2016

Further reading[edit]

  • Judith Collins (1987). Winifred Nicholson – Tate Retrospective Catalogue. The Tate Gallery, London.
  • Andrew Nicholson (ed.) (1987). Unknown Colour: Painting, Letters, Writings by Winifred Nicholson. London: Faber. ISBN 0571149502
  • Alice Strang (1999). Winifred Nicholson in Scotland (exhibition catalogue). Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, ISBN 1903278406.
  • Jon Blackwood (2001). Winifred Nicholson (exhibition catalogue). Cambridge: Kettle's Yard. ISBN 090707488X.
  • [s.n.] (2005) Winifred Nicholson 1893–1981: A Cumbrian Perspective (exhibition catalogue). Cockermouth: Castlegate House Gallery.
  • Christopher Andreae (2009). Winifred Nicholson. Farnham: Lund Humphries. ISBN 9780853319726.
  • [s.n.] (2012). Winifred Nicholson, Music of Colour (exhibition catalogue). Cambridge: Kettle's Yard. ISBN 9781904561415.
  • Jovan Nicholson (2013). Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, William Staite Murray – Art and Life 1920 – 1931. London: Philip Wilson Publishers. ISBN 9781781300183
  • Christopher Wood, Anne L. Goodchild (2013). Dear Winifred: Christopher Wood, letters to Winifred and Ben Nicholson, 1926–1930. Bristol: Sansom & Company. ISBN 9781906593995.
  • Jovan Nicholson (2016). Winifred Nicholson in Cumberland. Kendal: Abbot Hall Art Gallery. ISBN 9781906043209
  • Jovan Nicholson (2016). Winifred Nicholson: Liberation of Colour. London: Philip Wilson Publishers. ISBN 9781781300466

External links[edit]

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