William Nicholson / Sanford Schwartz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schwartz, Sanford, 1946-

Contributor:

Nicholson, William, 1872-1949.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nicholson, William, 1872-1949--Criticism and interpretation.

Nicholson, William.

Nicholson, William, 1872-1949.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

viii, 296 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, [2004]

Summary:

William Nicholson (1872-1949) was a painter of ravishingly beautiful still lifes and landscapes. He was also an internationally known postermaker and graphic artist as well as a theater designer and children's book illustrator and author. Yet he holds an uncertain place in British art, largely because he left no statements about his aims and, indirectly, because his son -- the better-known artist Ben Nicholson -- subtly downplayed his father's achievements.

In this lively book, the first full critical biography of William Nicholson, Sanford Schwartz shows that the artist's output has a coherent philosophical and psychological unity very much in harmony with his times. Schwartz argues that in many of his formats, Nicholson was concerned with the delights and deceptions of sheer looking, and that he shared goals both with contemporaries such as Walter Sickert and with a host of twentieth-century painters including Stanley Spencer and Lucian Freud. Schwartz links Nicholson's radically casual still lifes, telephoto-like views, and experiments with mirrored images to the work of a range of his fellow artists. Presenting Nicholson in relation, too, to Rudyard Kipling, Max Beerbohm, and Gordon Craig, among others, Schwartz points out how his feeling for scale, proportion, and relativity were part of a generation's quest to alter the priorities of their Victorian forbears. The Nicholson who emerges is a wily and quietly subversive creator.

The private William Nicholson is also portrayed in a new and more complex light. Schwartz asserts that Nicholson's life was a series of rivalries and collaborations with many individuals, and his uneasy relationship with his son Ben (which came to a head with their involvement with the same woman) provides a major thread in Schwartz's narrative. Illustrated with paintings, drawings, and photographs, this highly readable book reassesses Nicholson's achievement and suggests a new place for him within twentieth-century art.

Contents:

The worlds of William Nicholson

Brainstorming with Gordon Craig

In black and white

Why Morris dancing?

Portraitist

Orpen's mirror, or reflectivity

Little and small great pictures

This was me

The mirror

The big picture

Aloft

Snow at Sutton Veny

The sun is my undoing.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0300095430

OCLC:

53459110

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description