Sir William Nicholson (1872-1949)

Sir William Nicholson (1872-1949)

Turtle Soup

Signed with initial N (lower left)

Oil on panel, 1937

44.1 x 30.7cm

Provenance:

Leicester Galleries, London;

Where purchased by Beaumont Pease, 1st Baron Wardington (1869-1950), May 1938;

And by family descent

Literature:

Lillian Browse, William Nicholson (London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956), no.549 (as oil on canvas);

Patricia Reed, William Nicholson: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings (London, Modern Art Press, 2011), p.599, no.796 (illustrated)

Exhibited:

Leicester Galleries, London, Paintings by Sir William Nicholson, 1939, no.20

In this work of 1937, William Nicholson has depicted the interior of Goldsmith's Hall, where he was taken for a livery dinner by Lord Wardington, the chairman of Lloyds Bank. Nicholson had been commissioned to paint a portrait of Lord Wardington earlier that year.

In January 1938, Nicholson described this painting in a letter to Geoffrey Taylor: 'Turtle Soup M.S. named it, with many elderly backbonesofoldoldEngland hidden behind a weight of decorations and, overhead, a chandelier that may descend on them any moment by its own paint weight…'. M.S. is the novelist Marguerite Steen (1894-1975), who was Nicholson's lover from 1935 until his death.

The painting relates to an earlier work, City Dinner, of 1934, which depicts a dinner at the Drapers' Company (see Christie's, London, 20th Century British Art, 10 June 2005, lot 27).

We are grateful to Patricia Reed for her assistance cataloguing the present work.