Landscape, figure and portrait painter, born on 17th February 1856 in St Pancras, London. She was the eighth child of eleven from the two marriages of a shoe manufacturer called James Hickson (1811–1880). Her German mother – James’s second wife – was formerly Mrs Wilhelmina Thasnelde Adelheid (née von Einem, 1829–1884), whose father, J. G. von Einem, was noted as a colonel in the Hanoverian Legion in 1815. They had married on 5th October 1852. On what must have been an unusual occasion at Old St Pancras Church, Margaret was not only baptised as late as 1864 but it was done with all five of her full siblings, born between 1853 and 1861, and three young cousins. The latter’s parents were James’s merchant brother, Samuel, and his wife Ida Anna Clothilde, who was Wilhelmina’s sister. The register misleadingly gives the birthplace of all as Highgate, which was where Samuel lived.
While still an RA student, she first exhibited at the Society of British Artists in 1879 (Still Life) and at the Dudley Gallery in 1881, when she was also the first female student to win the Academy’s Creswick Prize for her oil of A Shady Lane (at Albury, Sussex). This was bought at the Students’ Exhibition by the Fine Art Society and resold when exhibited at the Academy in 1882.
Her exhibiting record thereafter was wide until 1901, when she was 45: why it then stopped is unknown unless family circumstances perhaps inhibited her work or made further exhibition unnecessary. Johnson and Greutner (The Dictionary of British Artists 1880–1940, 1999) list that shown as: ‘Royal Society of Artists, Birmingham 10, Dudley Gallery and New Dudley Gallery 4, Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts 1, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool 4, Manchester City Art Gallery 3, New Gallery 1, Royal Academy 9 [1882–1900], Royal Society of British Artists 7 [in fact 8, 1879–1900], Royal Hibernian Academy 1, Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 4, Royal Institute of Oil Painters 3, Royal Scottish Academy 1, Society of Women Artists 18.’
In 1884 several City livery companies commissioned a beech-tree landscape from Hickson that was presented, at a banquet at Chingford, to John T. Bedford (a member of the City of London Corporation) for his work in saving Epping Forest as public land, against threat of development. From 1890 she began exhibiting Italian views in oil and watercolours, having extended her travels at least as far as Florence and Verona, and she also successfully painted portraits in oil and watercolour. Two oils – her only works listed on Art UK – were also presentation pieces; of Thomas Bryant, FRCS (1857–1888), surgeon to Guy’s Hospital, and Edward Cock, FRCS (1805–1892), President of the Royal College of Surgeons. Both were presented to Guy’s, the latter by the sitter’s colleagues and the former probably so.
Hickson does not appear in Gray’s Dictionary of Women Artists and the only contemporary piece on her yet sighted is a profile in The Queen, The Lady’s Newspaper, for 22nd December 1894, (p. 1110). Clearly based on an interview, it includes details of early exhibited works and a portrait photo of her by W. Goodfellow of Regent Street.
Her RA submission addresses from 1882 were Cholmeley Park, Highgate, and then 6 Chalcot Gardens, Haverstock Hill (1883, 1887–1889), at least the first of which was probably her parents’ home. In 1890 it was 9 Robert Street, Hampstead Road, and in 1897 and 1900, Steeles Road, Belsize Park. She never married and died in Camberwell on 11th December 1919.
Summarised from Art UK’s Art Detective discussion ‘Can we establish the “Hickson” of this and another portrait of two sitters connected to Guy’s Hospital?’
Text source: Art Detective
