Cranborne Chase Pictures
Copyright Cranborne Chase Pictures 2005-2008©
William Nicholson
Sir William Nicholson was born in 1872 in Newark in Nottinghamshire. His father was a successful manufacturer of agricultural machinery. William was sent to Magnus School Newark which he hated. He showed no aptitude for anything except art but the art master, William Cubbley, saw his promise and persuaded his father to send him to art school.
He duly went to Sir Hubert Herkomer’s art academy at Bushy (1888). He was the youngest boy student and he made friends with the youngest girl student. A silent girl called Mabel Pryde.
William did not impress Sir Hubert Herkomer who considered William to be lazy and rebellious. He was expelled for ‘bad attendance and bad work’.
But at Herkomer’s he met two of the most important people in his life; Mabel Pryde whom he married, and her brother James Pryde with whom he designed ground breaking posters. They called their partnership the ‘Beggarstaff Brothers’ (after a name they saw printed on an old sack).
William and Mabel married without telling their parents and went to live in ’The Eight Bells’, a converted pub in Denham where their first child Ben was born in 1894.
The rest of his life story is too long to tell on this page but is amusingly told by the novelist with he spent his last years ; Marguerite Steen, She wrote his biography ‘William Nicholson’ while he was still alive. He died in 1949.