Brothers and partners
Ruari McLean
WILLIAM NICHOLSON: THE GRAPHIC WORK by Colin Campbell Barrie & Jenkins, £40, pp. 256 In 1900 the German art periodical Die Inset reproduced a woodcut by William Nicholson (1872-1949) along with prints by Bonnard, Vuillard and Rodin. In company of that calibre Nicholson rightfully belongs; if he had only been born in Paris instead of Newark-on-Trent, he would today still be world-famous — as has been said also of other English artists such as Lavery, Orpen and Augustus John.
Nicholson was a wonderful artist and Colin Campbell's book, with his previous one on the Beggarstaff posters, is a joy, particularly for its profuse, well-reproduced illustrations, including 46 in colour.
Nicholson met a girl at art school, the sister of a slightly older artist, James Pryde, in 1880, and they married in 1893. They set up home in a former public-house, the Eight Bells, in Denham; soon afterwards Jimmy Pryde arrived for a visit and stayed off and on for nearly two years. Out of that came the Beggarstaff Brothers partnership (the name came from a battered grain sack) which made them both famous. It was a collaboration as amazing and mysterious as that of Edith Somerville and Martin Ross in writing, parallel both for its success and for the impossibility of separat- ing the contributions of each artist. An anonymous article quoted in Campbell's previous book states,
an idea once started, it seems to travel back- wards and forwards, from one brain to the other, gradually picking up its character until it reaches its final and perfect form.
The Beggarstaff partnership lasted about five years and was not wildly successful in business terms: most of their posters were never printed. The few that were merely changed the face of British poster design and astonished the world.
Before the partnership ended, Nicholson had started on the woodcuts that are perhaps still his best-known works in a popular sense: An Alphabet, and An Almanac of Twelve Sports, both published by William Heinemann in 1898. Nicholson had been introduced to Heinemann (who looked for young artists) a year or two before, and been given a book cover to design, a novel about racing called Mr Blake of Newmarket, in which Mr Blake on the cover looks very like Mr Heinemann. Nicholson then made a bookplate for Heinemann, based on a windmill, which Heinemann adapted into his publishing trademark and is still in use today — per- haps the most familiar and longest-lived trademark ever made. We are not told if it was originally a gift, or if Nicholson was paid for it.
It may be a moot point whether Nichol- son was greater as a painter or a graphic artist, but while other books exist on Nicholson as a painter this is the first to cover, very fully, his graphic work, and illustrate much of it. I suspect that very few people will have any idea how much there was, how varied in subject yet how consis- tent in style, how inventive, amusing and delightful. Over 200 items are catalogued in detail. For art historians it will be essen- tial, but for ordinary lookers it is an entrancing picture-book.
Ruari McLean is the author of Nicholas Bentley Drew the Pictures, published by the Scolar Press. William Nicholson's Graphic Work is on show at The Fine Arts Society, 148 New Bond Street, W1 until 28 May.
An illustration from The Pirate Twins by William Nicholson, 1929
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