William Nicholson

Sir William Nicholson (1872–1949) was a leading British painter, printmaker, and designer of the Edwardian and inter-war years. Best known for elegant still lifes, theatrical portraits, and the celebrated Beggarstaff Brothers posters he produced with his brother-in-law James Pryde, Nicholson developed a refined tonal manner that influenced his pupil Winifred Nicholson and his son Ben Nicholson. His Hundred Jugs and the Mushrooms still lifes are touchstones of British modern still-life painting.

Nicholson painted in a tonally restrained, elegantly simplified manner with rich blacks, warm earth tones, and silvery whites. His subjects emphasize the formal beauty of everyday objects.

Nicholson bridged Edwardian elegance and twentieth-century British modernism and shaped the still-life tradition that Ben Nicholson would carry into abstraction.