Sir William Nicholson

(British, 1872-1949)

Sixteen designs for playing cards the largest 13.6 x 9.8 cm. (5 3/8 x 3 7/8 in.); the smallest 13.1 x 9.3 cm. (5 1/8 x 3 5/8 in.) Executed circa 1901

Footnotes

King of Spades: signed with initials 'W.N.' (lower left)
Queen of Spades: signed with initials 'W.N.' (lower left)
Jack of Spades: signed with initials 'W.N.' (lower left)
King of Hearts: signed with initials 'W.N.' (lower left)
Queen of Hearts: partially signed with initials (lower left)
King of Diamonds: signed with initials 'W.N.' (lower left)
Jack of Diamonds: signed with initials 'W.N.' (lower left)
Ace of Clubs: signed 'Nicholson' (lower left); further signed with initial 'W' (lower right)
Queen of Clubs; signed with initials 'W.N.' (lower left)

Provenance
Possibly the Artist's daughter, Nancy
Private Collection, France, since circa 1970-75

Literature
Colin Campbell, William Nicholson: The Graphic Work, Barrie & Jenkins, London, 1992, p.113-4 (ill., p.59,113,130,169)

The following text is taken from Colin Campbell's 2011 essay on the present works, the full version of which is available on request from the department:

In the summer of 1898, the English painter William Nicholson left London for Oxfordshire, where he leased a house in the village of Woodstock. 'Chaucer's House', formerly the home of the artist's maternal grandparents, was an attractive grey stone building situated directly opposite the great gates of Sir John Vanbrugh's imposing Blenheim Palace. It had a view of Blenheim Park on one side, and looked out over the wide valley that cradles the Banbury Road on the other. It was a peaceful spot, and the novelist Marguerite Steen, Nicholson's companion during his later years, recalled that William felt more truly at home there than he did in any of the other houses in which he lived during the course of his life. He was now better off; he did not have to work to commission to the same extent as he had done in the past; and, as always, when he found himself in happy surroundings, 'the creative spirit was flaming [and] he was working on a dozen things at once (Marguerite Steen, William Nicholson, London, 1943, pp.76, 81).

The works that survive from the years between circa 1900 and Nicholson's return to London in 1904 confirm what Steen says about the productivity of the young artist's Woodstock period. Nicholson was happiest when painting landscapes and still-life's, but in order to buy the time he needed to indulge his inclinations as a painter he had to produce a formal portrait in oils from time to time, and early on during his years at Woodstock he began to make his mark in that line with likenesses of two men of letters, W.E. Henley (1900; London, Tate Gallery) and Max Beerbohm (1901; London, National Portrait Gallery). It was at Woodstock, too, that three major projects were conceived and executed: sixteen pen and watercolour drawings of characters from fiction, later reproduced in the form of lithographs as Characters of Romance, (October 1900); twenty-four watercolour drawings of historic Oxford buildings (published as lithographic facsimiles in Oxford, 1905); and a group of designs for playing-cards that Steen describes in her biography of Nicholson as 'Kings, queens and knaves ... drawn from historical characters of England' (Steen, Op.Cit., p.82). The existence of the last-named project has long been known from references in Steen and from a handful of designs, mostly duplicates, that now belong to the William Nicholson Trust (Miscellaneous designs for playing cards, now in the possession of the William Nicholson Trust. See Colin Campbell, William Nicholson: The Graphic Work, London, 1992, figs.115, 116, 176 and pl. 18d.). However, a set of designs for court cards, the only known complete set, has recently come to light, making it possible to assess the importance of this unique project for the first time.