SIR WILLIAM NICHOLSON (BRITISH 1872-1949)
NANCY IN A FEATHER HAT (THE ARTIST'S DAUGHTER), 1910
£131,450
Auction: The Gillian Raffles Collection Evening - Lots 1 to 73 - Thursday 01 May at 18:00
Description
signed and dated (lower left), oil on canvas
Dimensions
75cm x 62.2cm (29 ½in x 24 ½in)
Provenance
with the Goupil Gallery, London, where purchased by the 9th Duke of Marlborough (Charles Spencer-Churchill 1871-1934) and returned;
probably with P. & D. Colnaghi Ltd., London;
Christie's, London, 7 December 1917, lot 21, as Portrait of the Artist's Daughter (260gns) to Frederick Leverton Harris MP (1864-1926);
An unidentified Scottish collection;
J. & R. Edmiston Auctioneers, Glasgow, 26 March 1929, lot 36, as The Artist's Daughter (The Feathered Hat) (£100 16s.);
with Ian McNicol, Glasgow;
Christie's, London, 1940-1 (catalogue untraced);
with Piccadilly Gallery, London;
J. E. (Jack) Posnansky and by descent to his daughter Gillian Raffles;
The Collection of Gillian Raffles.
Footnote
Exhibited:
Goupil Gallery Salon, London, October – December 1910, no. 108 (£315);
XIV Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Città di Venezia, April - October 1924, no. 53, as Ritratto di ragazza con berretto piumato.
Literature:
Stokes, Hugh, ‘The Goupil Gallery Salon’, Country Life, Vol. XXVIII, no. 722, 5 November 1910, p.635;
Ladies' Field, Vol. LII, no. 664, 3 December 1910, p.6;
The Art Journal, December 1910, p. 383, illustrated;
Baldry, A. L., ‘The Paintings of William Nicholson’, The Studio, vol. LIII, no.219, June 1911, pp.8-9, illustrated;
Reed, Patricia, William Nicholson: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Modern Art Press Ltd., London, 2011, p. 172, cat. no. 178, illustrated.
This painting has been requested for inclusion in the William Nicholson exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester to be held from 22 November 2025 to 31 May 2026.
Portrait of the Artist’s Daughter: Nancy in a Feather Hat by William Nicholson
First exhibited in 1910 to widespread acclaim, the re-appearance in public of Nancy in a Feather Hat, a portrait by William Nicholson of his daughter, is a major event in the current evaluation of the artist’s standing within twentieth-century British art history.
Nicholson met the Scottish artist Mabel Pryde (1871-1918) in 1888, when they were students at Hubert von Herkomer’s art school in Bushey, Hertfordshire. They eloped five years later and their children, the artist Benjamin (Ben), the soldier John (Tony), the designer Annie (Nancy) and the architect Christopher (Kit), were born between 1894 and 1904.
The children sat for both of their parents and Patricia Reed has stated that ‘as a child, Nancy was Nicholson’s favourite model’ (Patricia Reed, William Nicholson: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Modern Art Press Ltd, London, 2011, p. 67). His earliest recorded portrait of her dates from 1901 when she was aged about two (Reed, op.cit., no.33), whilst Nancy with Ribbons (Reed, ibid., no.34) of the same year became the first of his works to be acquired for a public collection when it was purchased for the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Venice in 1905.
Nancy in a Feather Hat was painted during a particularly auspicious period in Nicholson’s career. The family were established in homes in Mecklenburgh Square, London and Rottingdean in East Sussex, whilst his prowess as a portraitist was acknowledged by election to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters (1909) and his role as a founding member of the National Portrait Gallery (1910). A successful solo exhibition was staged at the Chenil Gallery in 1910 and William Marchant of the Goupil Gallery had become his main dealer.
In her description of the present portrait, Reed has explained:
‘The artist’s daughter, Nancy, aged ten, wears a blue shawl and a large feather hat, while the bouquet to her right suggests that she is a flower-seller. The apricot-coloured ostrich feathers and blue shawl were William Nicholson’s starting-point, but it is Nancy’s personality that attracts the viewer’s interest.’ (Reed, ibid., p.172).
Indeed, the work encompasses not only the intimate yet unsentimental bond between father and daughter, but also Nicholson’s bravura use of dressing-up and other props to weave a suggested narrative, a deft manipulation of chiaroscuro and the use of contrasting colours to highlight aspects of a rhythmic composition. By presenting his sitter in a shallow, undefined space and in front of a plain, dark background, a palette based as much on monochrome as complimentary colour fields is used to the full, wielded by way of his beautiful handling of oil paint, in which fringe shawl and flower petals are realised with as much attention as tones of complexion and the texture of feathers. Nancy was to bear out the independence suggested at this age in adulthood, not least by applying feminist principles to her marriage to the poet Robert Graves and to her career designing and printing fabrics.
When Nancy in a Feathered Hat was exhibited in the Goupil Gallery Salon in 1910, it was singled out for praise in the press from Country Life to The Studio. It was one of twenty-two works by Nicholson to be shown at the Venice Biennale of 1924, a milestone in his international career. Its illustrious provenance involves the 9th Duke of Marlborough (briefly) and includes the British businessman and Member of Parliament Frederick Leverton Harris. It was eventually acquired by Gillian Raffles’ father, J. E. (Jack) Posnansky, from whom she inherited it.
This painting has been requested for inclusion in the William Nicholson exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester to be held from 22 November 2025 to 31 May 2026.