Prydie -- Back Home a Century On

Nicholson's a big name in the history of British art. Our 1970s copy of the Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists gives half a page (a comparatively long entry) to Sir William and his eldest son Ben, "the best-known British abstract painter". There's no mention, though, of Mabel Pryde Nicholson, William's wife and Ben's mother.

She was a painter too. But she hasn't had an exhibition devoted to her since shortly after her death more than a century ago. Now, for a short time only, you can see Prydie: The Life and Art of Mabel Pryde Nicholson 1871-1918, back at the Nicholsons' old family home, The Grange in Rottingdean, on the outskirts of Brighton. 

This is a show strong on family portraits (definitely the most striking of Mabel's works on display are those of her own family), with tantalising hints at sometimes quite complex paintings by her whose whereabouts are unknown. All this is woven in with the complicated and colourful story of the Nicholson family in an exhibition that's the most ambitious ever put on at a gallery that normally hosts shows by local artists. The curators -- one of them Lucy Davies, the author of a new biography of Mabel -- have been able to source works from national and private collections, some at the very last moment as the show has been publicised. 

And here is perhaps the star painting in the exhibition, Mabel's image of two of her children -- her daughter Nancy and youngest son, Kit -- painted in The Grange in 1911, in fact in the room on the right of the front door of the house as you go in, as you can appreciate when you visit. The black-and-white chequered floor Kit is standing on is still there, or at least the pattern has been retained, because the house has been much knocked about since then, including by Canadian soldiers in World War II, and beyond where Kit is standing is now the local library.  

There are clear influences to be discerned here. Mabel was very interested in the theatre, and there's a bit of a stage-set atmosphere to the painting, some of the views through doors you get in Dutch Golden Age genre scenes (think Pieter de Hooch), and more contemporaneously, a feel of the enigmatic interiors of Vilhelm Hammershøi, whose paintings were shown in London in 1907. 

But we need a little biography: Born in Edinburgh in 1871 as the youngest child of Dr David Pryde, a headmaster, and his wife Barbara, the descendant of a family of distinguished painters and engravers, Mabel went at the age of 17 to Bushey Art School in Hertfordshire, a then-famous establishment run by the German-born Hubert van Herkomer. Mabel, the youngest female student, came to the attention of the youngest male student, William Nicholson. In 1893, they eloped -- to the not very romantic destination of nearby Ruislip -- without their parents' knowledge to get married....

And this, dating from that same year, is William's portrait of Mabel, as the Lady in Yellow, though it's less of a portrait than a theme, on the lines of James Whistler's Symphonies in White, created more than two decades earlier.

With an allowance from William's father, the newlyweds set up home first in Denham in Buckinghamshire, then at Woodstock in Oxfordshire. Mabel had four children from 1894 to 1904 -- Ben, Tony, Nancy and Kit -- and stopped painting. William's career advanced, including a spell with Mabel's brother James Pryde producing radical poster designs in the late 1890s as the Beggarstaff brothers (you can see some facsimiles in this show). 

Mabel started to paint again in about 1905, the year before the family moved to a house in Bloomsbury. 

Here they are, captured as A Bloomsbury Family by William Orpen in 1907, with Mabel lurking apparently as far away in the background as possible. Those prints on the wall, by the way, are the very same ones that you saw in our first picture. 

The Nicholsons bought the house in Rottingdean in 1909, just five minutes from the sea. It must have been quite idyllic, though it's hard these days to get a feeling for how the place must have been, with the constant stream and roar of traffic along the coast road. It was a productive period for both artists.

This is Mabel's portrait of Nancy aged about 11 with a rabbit. As well as bringing Mabel's story back to life, the show also acquaints us with the lives of William and their children. Nancy, a woman with strong feminist convictions, was a talented illustrator and married the poet Robert Graves towards the end of World War I. 

And below is the youngest son, Kit, pictured in the striking Red Jersey that gives the painting its title. 

The children also feature in some of the currently untraced paintings that we can see in this exhibition only in the form of black-and-white photographs made by Ben in 1920 to record his mother's work. In Kit in the Glass with Nancy and Sammy, exhibited in 1912, Mabel depicted Kit sitting in a chair, looking into a mirror, in which you can see her standing painting the scene at an easel. It sold for £200, enabling Mabel to build a studio in the garden for her and William, designed by Edwin Lutyens, no less. It's a rather scientifically composed work, and there's another missing painting involving mirror images, Kit on the Platform, that's even more complex, and quite difficult to decipher at first glance. You get a bit of a reminder of the music-hall images of Walter Sickert, with whom the Nicholsons spent time in Dieppe. 

Also a bit Sickert-like is this Harlequin, one of three with this theatrical theme in the show. The contrast between the dark background and the silvery highlights on the costume are quite striking. 

The Nicholsons sold The Grange in 1914, when William accepted an invitation to travel to India with Lutyens for six months. Ben was too unfit to be called up for military service, but Tony was sent to the front in 1917. Home on leave in June 1918, he was unaware he was carrying Spanish flu and infected Mabel, who died in July. Tony was wounded and died in France not long before the war ended. Ben and Nancy organised a memorial exhibition for their mother in 1920, her final moment of fame. Until now. 

Practicalities

Prydie: The Life and Art of Mabel Pryde Nicholson 1871-1918 is on at the Grange Gallery in Rottingdean until August 26. It's open Wednesdays to Saturdays from 1000 to 1600 and Sundays from 1300 to 1600. Entry is free but they welcome donations. The gallery is relatively small, limiting the numbers that can attend, so they recommend booking free timed tickets here to avoid disappointment. Give yourself an hour to see the exhibition. 

The gallery is opposite the pond in the picturesque heart of Rottingdean's old village (Edward Burne-Jones and Rudyard Kipling also owned houses overlooking the village green). Rottingdean is easily reached by very frequent buses along the coast road from central Brighton; get off at The White Horse pub and walk inland along the High Street, turning right on Vicarage Lane. If the weather's right, you can also walk or cycle along the coast in one or both directions -- it's about 6 kilometres. 

We can recommend a couple of other good exhibitions on in the Brighton area at the moment, though given the lack of direct transport links it might be a little ambitious to fit them in on the same day if you're travelling any distance. At Charleston in Lewes, there's Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An Untold Story, a queer tale of art-world deception, while the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft is showing Bloomin' Brilliant: The Life and Work of Raymond Briggs. 

Images

Mabel Pryde Nicholson (1871-1918), The Grange, c. 1911, Scottish National Gallery
William Nicholson (1872-1949), Lady in Yellow, 1893, Private Collection
William Orpen (1878-1931), A Bloomsbury Family, 1907, Scottish National Gallery
Mabel Pryde Nicholson, Nancy with Rabbit, c. 1909, Private collection, courtesy of Patrick Bourne & Co., London
Mabel Pryde Nicholson, The Red Jersey, c. 1912, Aberdeen Art Gallery
Mabel Pryde Nicholson, The Harlequin, c. 1910, Tate