William Newzam Prior Nicholson was born at Newark-on-Trent on 5 February 1872. He was the son of William Newzam Nicholson, MP, an industrialist of Newark and Annie Elizabeth Prior. He was educated at Magnus School, Newark, where he was taught drawing by a former pupil of Sir William Beechey. He studied at Hubert von Herkomer’s art school at Bushey in Hertfordshire 1888-89. He then set out for Paris to study at the Académie Julian 1889-90, where he encountered James Pryde, whose sister, the artist Mabel Pryde (1871-1918) he married in 1893. Their children were Ben Nicholson, the architect Christopher ‘Kit’ Nicholson and Nancy Nicholson (first wife of the poet Robert Graves). In 1894, Nicholson began collaborating on poster designs with his brother-in-law James Pryde and the two became known as J and W Beggarstaff. Nicholson was convinced that graphic art could be made to pay and decided to try his hand at printmaking. Once identifying that woodcuts most suited his temperament and style, it took Nicholson a couple of years to become proficient. He conceived the notion of venturing into the commemorative print market, initially with a hand coloured woodcut of the Prince of Wales’s Derby winner, ‘Persimmon’. The print was shown at the Fine Art Society in Bond Street, London, where it was spotted by Whistler. He recommended Nicholson’s work to his friend, the publisher William Heinemann, and by the time Persimmon was reproduced in the January 1897 edition of the Magazine of Art its creator was hard at work on the first of the well-known series of woodcuts that Heinemann would issue between 1897 and 1902. Nicholson’s Alphabet was published just before Christmas in 1897. While a number of the subjects were traditional, others were modern, and several images depict friends or contemporaries of the artist. Nicholson soon became known for his skill and innovation in the medium, elevating the art form to a high level of success, both aesthetically and commercially. His 1899 woodcut portrait of Queen Victoria with a Scottie dog was one of the most famous British prints ever made. From 1898 he exhibited at the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers where he came into the orbit of Whistler, who was briefly President of that organisation. Nicholson produced several theatre designs, including the original sets for J M Barrie’s Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up premiered at the Duke of York’s Theatre in 1904. That same year, he was a founder member of the Society of Twelve, and had his first one-man show at the Paterson Gallery in 1906. A painter of still-lifes, landscapes and portraits, a skilled engraver and a theatre designer, Nicholson devoted a considerable effort to cultivating his image as a ‘dandy’ and spent much of his time kitted out in white duck trousers and patent shoes. He travelled extensively, visiting America in 1901 and 1921, India in 1915-16, South Africa in 1931 and visited Europe frequently. He also designed stained glass, notably a memorial window at St Andrew’s Church, Mells. Nicholson was particularly fond of using jugs as the focus of his still life painting. The properties of the contrasting shapes, colours, textures and motifs of different types of jugs provided endless possibilities for his treatment of light, tone and form. His fascination is perhaps most cogently exemplified in his seminal large-scale masterpiece The Hundred Jugs (1916; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool). Odd though it may seem to modern sensibilities, Nicholson was awarded the Gold Medal for Graphic Art in the 1928 Summer Olympics at Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He illustrated children’s books including: The Velveteen Rabbit (1922) by Margery Williams and his own Clever Bill (1926) and The Pirate Twins (1929) for Faber & Faber. Although temperamentally unsuited to a career as a portraitist, Nicholson painted them throughout his life. His portraits of Max Beerbohm and the garden designer Gertrude Jekyll may be found in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. Despite his remarkable range of artistic accomplishments, Nicholson was never elected to membership of the RA and notwithstanding his isolation from the artistic establishment, was knighted in 1936. He served as a Trustee of the Tate Gallery in the years 1934-39. Sir William died on 16 May 1949 at Blewbury in Berkshire. A substantial body of his work may be found in the collection of the Tate Gallery, London. Nicholson’s famous depiction HM The Queen may be seen above.