William Nicholson is widely admired for his work as a painter, printmaker and theatre designer. William Newzam Prior Nicholson was born on the 5th of February 1872 in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire. Nicholson’s talent for art was noticed early on, and from the age of twelve he enjoyed private drawing lessons from his school drawing master William Cubley. Nicholson left school at the age of 16 to study at Hubert Herkomer’s School of Art in Bushey; however Nicholson was not impressed by the dogmatic teaching there and by October 1891 he left England for Paris. Once there Nicholson studied at the Académie Julian and soon discovered the treasures of the Louvre. Nicholson decided to return home after several months and at some point between 1890 and 1892 he made his first woodcut. In April 1893 Nicholson married Mabel Pryde, who he had met at Herkomer’s, and together they moved to Denham, Buckinghamshire.

In 1894 William Nicholson made his first poster design in partnership with his fellow artist, and brother-in-law, James Pryde. The two artists produced various poster designs under the pseudonym J. and W. Beggarstaff over the next few years; these were greatly admired at the International Artistic Pictorial Poster Exhibitions held at the Westminster Aquarium in 1894 and 1896.

Nicholson soon turned to the woodcut medium in earnest. In 1896, after seeing William’s woodcut of the Prince of Wales’s Derby-winning horse Persimmon at the Fine Art Society, Whistler recommended the young artist to his friend the publisher William Heinemann. This collaboration was to prove the turning point in Nicholson’s career as a printmaker and key series of ‘cuts’ including An Alphabet, An Almanac of Twelve Sports, London Types, and Twelve Portraits were published by Heinemann to great acclaim over the next few years.