BESSIE MACNICOL (SCOTTISH 1869-1904)
THE PINK HAT
£35,201
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale: Lots 100 to 191 | 06 June 2024 at 6pm
Description
Signed and dated '98, oil on canvas
Dimensions
51cm x 41cm (20in x 16in)
Footnote
Bessie MacNicol attended the Glasgow School of Art between 1887 and 1892. She went on to Fra Newbery’s summer schools at Lundin Links, Fife and later travelled to Paris to continue her training at the Académie Colarossi. In 1893, MacNicol exhibited for the first and only time at the Royal Academy of Arts, London and then the Royal Glasgow Institute where she would continue to exhibit until her death in 1904.
By 1894, MacNicol had returned to Glasgow and acquired a studio at 175 St Vincent Street. It was during the following years that she earned her place among the Glasgow School painters.
The influence of MacNicol’s training at the Académie Colarossi is clear in many of her paintings from the 1890s and nearly all of these are figurative works. Elegant sitters wearing an array of wide petticoats, lace, feathers, fur and millinery became a recurring theme. The Pink Hat, an accomplished portrait of 1898, depicts a fashionable sitter wearing a turban of material styled as a tammy with pom pom, complete with a sheer veil wrapped down and around the sitter’s neck. Wide flat brush strokes create an austere background while MacNicol’s suggestive paint handling highlights the rolls of fabric upon the sitter’s head and the lace and frills of material where the dark cape is tied with a bow.
MacNicol is well represented in public collections, including Aberdeen Art Gallery, Edinburgh Museums & Galleries, Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum and Perth Art Gallery. In his book, Scottish Painting Past and Present (T.C. and E. C. Jack, Edinburgh, 1908, p.436), James Caw, Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, recognised MacNicol as ‘probably the most accomplished lady-artist that Scotland has yet produced.’