Nancy as the Harlequin with a Windsor Chair c.1910
Mabel Nicholson (1871–1918)
National Galleries of Scotland
Mabel Pryde Nicholson [also known as Mabel Pryde, and as Mabel Nicholson] was born Mabel Scott Lauder Pryde in Edinburgh, Scotland on 12 February 1871. She was the daughter of Dr David Pryde, headmaster of Edinburgh Ladies College and the original Chairman of the Edinburgh Pen and Pencil Club. Her maternal great-uncles were the painters Robert Scott Lauder (1803-1869) and James Eckford Lauder (1811-1869), and her brother, James Pryde (1866-1941) was one of the artistic partnership, the Beggarstaffs. In 1888 she enrolled at the Herkomer Art School in Bushey, Hertfordshire where she met Willism Nicholson (1872-1949), subsequently the other half of the Beggarstaffs, whom she married in 1893. She worked as a portrait and figure painter and between 1910 and 1920 exhibited at the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, and the New English Art Club in London; Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts; and at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.
She died in London in July 1918, a victim of the Spanish influenza pandemic. A posthumous retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Goupil Gallery, London, 1920. She was the mother of the artist Ben Nicholson and the architect Kit Nicholson.
Text source: Art History Research net (AHR net)
Text source: Art History Research net (AHR net)
