Beschreibung:

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. Read more »