First exhibited in 1910 to widespread acclaim, the re-appearance in public of Nancy in a Feather Hat in our Spring 2025 MODERN MADE auction, a portrait by William Nicholson of his daughter, was 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.
