William Nicholson (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in Britis)

"William Nicholson (1872-1949) was an painter of ravishingly beautiful still lifes and landscapes. He was also an internationally known postermaker and graphic artist as well as a theater designer and children's book illustrator and author. Yet he holds an uncertain place in British art, largely because he left no statements about his aims, and, indirectly, because his son, the better-known artist Ben Nicholson, subtly downplayed his father's achievements." "In this book, the first full critical biography of William Nicholson, Sanford Schwartz shows that the artist's output has a coherent philosophical and psychological unity very much in harmony with his times. Schwartz argues that in many of his formats, Nicholson was concerned with the delights and deceptions of sheer looking, and that he shared goals both with contemporaries such as Walter Sickert and with a host of twentieth-century painters including Stanley Spencer and Lucian Freud." "The private William Nicholson is also portrayed in a new and more complex light. Schwartz asserts that Nicholson's life was a series of rivalries and collaborations with many individuals, and that his uneasy relationship with his son Ben (which came to a head with their invovlement with the same woman) provides a major thread in Schwartz's narrative. Illustrated with paintings, drawings and photographs, this book reassesses Nicholson's achievement and suggests a new place for him within twentieth-century art."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.