William Nicholson. By Marguerite Steen. (Collins. 16s.)
THIS book is written by an enthusiast and suffers by the extravagant assertions of its author. It is true that the artists who are most fashionable, either with contemporary Society at large or with the intellectual and aesthetic cliques of the day, are very unlikely to be those whose reputations live longest ; but it is one thing to assert that Sir William Nicholson belongs to neither of these categories and quite another to declare that he is " the greatest master of Still Life of his own or any other age." The expression of such an opinion (stated by the authoress to be that " of certain people who are qualified to judge ") puts the book out of serious consideration as an examination of Nicholson the artist ; there remains the man, whose attractive personality does sometimes emerge here, in spite of the rather tiresome gush enveloping it like a fog. There are, however, some interesting facts related, and excellent photographs of the artist himself and of many of his pictures. This makes it all the more regrettable -that the book was not better written. It belongs to a class of book, thought presumably to have popular appeal, which publishers with a surer literary judgement would not have made themselves responsible for.
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