Lot 126
BESSIE MACNICOL (SCOTTISH 1869-1904)
THE LILAC SUNBONNET
£55,201
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Session | 7th December 2023 at 18:00
Description
Signed, oil on canvas
Dimensions
Provenance
Provenance: Robert McTear & Co, Glasgow, 31st January 1908, lot 49
Richard Green, London (RH1455)
Exhibited: Craibe Angus & Son, Glasgow, Memorial Exhibition, 1905
Footnote
After her time at Glasgow School of Art, MacNicol trained at the Academie Colarossi in 1892, during which time she was highly influenced by the artists working in Paris and across Europe.
The Lilac Sunbonnet painted in 1899 is a superlative figurative work by the artist. The sitter, a fresh faced farm girl dressed in light flowing fabrics, is illuminated by the high sun bringing her into focus. While the work has been posed, MacNicol has managed to convey the spontaneity of the scene as a day’s work is being carried out. Her moment of rest under a branch is bathed in strong, fresh colour.
MacNicol is often grouped with The Glasgow Girls and must be recognised as an accomplished woman painter. However, during the 1890s her output was far more aligned with her artist friends The Glasgow Boys, most notably David Gauld (1865-1936), who produced a similar series of impressionistic portraits using expressive light and shade to illuminate the sitter.
In his book, Scottish Painting Past and Present (1908. pp436), James Caw, Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, recognised MacNicol as ‘probably the most accomplished lady-artist that Scotland has yet produced’.
