EQ Nicholson (4 November 1908 – 7 September 1992) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

painter and textile designer.

Early life

Elsie Queen Myers was born in London on 4 November 1908, the daughter of the novelist Leo Myers and his American-born wife Elsie Mellen Palmer; her sister Eveleen was born in 1910. Her paternal grandparents were the writer

Frederic W. H. Myers Frederic William Henry Myers (6 February 1843 – 17 January 1901) was a British poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. Myers' work on psychical research and his ideas about a "subliminal self" w ...

and the photographer

Eveleen Tennant Eveleen Tennant Myers (21 November 1856, Russell Square, London – 12 March 1937, London) was an English photographer. Biography Tennant was the third daughter of Charles Tennant (1796–1873) and Gertrude Barbara Rich Collier (1819–1918). ...

; her maternal grandfather was General

William Jackson Palmer William Jackson Palmer (September 18, 1836 – March 13, 1909) was an American civil engineer, veteran of the Civil War, industrialist, and philanthropist. During the American Civil War, he was promoted to brevet brigadier general and receive ...

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

, from whose wife Mary "Queen" Palmer, ''née'' Mellen, she received her second name. Her father frequented writers and artists including members of the

Bloomsbury Group The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strac ...

, the sculptor

Frank Dobson Frank Gordon Dobson (15 March 1940 – 11 November 2019) was a British Labour Party politician. As Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St. Pancras from 1979 to 2015, he served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Health from 1997 ...

and the painter

Cedric Morris Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris, 9th Baronet (11 December 1889 – 8 February 1982) was a British artist, art teacher and plantsman. He was born in Swansea in South Wales, but worked mainly in East Anglia. As an artist he is best known for his portra ...

. Leo Myers committed suicide on 7 April 1944 by taking an overdose of

Veronal Barbital (or barbitone), marketed under the brand names Veronal for the pure acid and Medinal for the sodium salt, was the first commercially available barbiturate. It was used as a sleeping aid (hypnotic) from 1903 until the mid-1950s. The chemic ...

. In 1931, EQ married the architect Christopher "Kit" Nicholson, youngest son of the painters William Nicholson and

Mabel Pryde Mabel Scott Lauder Pryde (12 February 1871 – July 1918) was a Scottish artist, the wife of artist William Nicholson, and the mother of artists Ben Nicholson and Nancy Nicholson and the architect Christopher 'Kit' Nicholson. Life She was ...

, and brother to

Ben Nicholson Benjamin Lauder Nicholson, Order of Merit, OM (10 April 1894 – 6 February 1982) was an English painter of abstract art, abstract compositions (sometimes in low relief), landscape and still-life. Background and training Nicholson was ...

and

Nancy Nicholson Annie "Nancy" Mary Pryde Nicholson (1899–1977) was an English painter and fabric designer. Early life Born Annie Mary Pryde Nicholson, she was the only daughter of the artists Sir William Nicholson and Mabel Pryde. She had three brothers, ar ...

. Kit and EQ had three children: two daughters, Jane Kasmin and textile designer Louisa Creed, and a son, the painter Tim Nicholson. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

EQ and the children lived at first at Yew Cottage on

Cranborne Chase Cranborne Chase () is an area of central southern England, straddling the counties Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire. It is part of the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The area is dominated by, ...

in Dorset, and then, from 1941 until 1947, at Alderholt Mill House, near

Fordingbridge Fordingbridge is a town and broader civil parish with a population of 6,000 on the River Avon in the New Forest District of Hampshire, England, near the Dorset and Wiltshire borders and on the edge of the New Forest, famed for its late medieva ...

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...

. Kit Nicholson died of injuries following a glider crash in Italy on 28 July 1948. EQ died in London in 1992.

Career

EQ trained briefly at the

Slade School of Fine Arts The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

under

Henry Tonks Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher. He was one of the first British arti ...

before studying

batik Batik is an Indonesian technique of wax-resist dyeing applied to the whole cloth. This technique originated from the island of Java, Indonesia. Batik is made either by drawing dots and lines of the resist with a spouted tool called a ''ca ...

in Paris in 1926. She later worked in batik as an assistant to

Marion Dorn Marion Victoria Dorn also known as Marion Dorn Kauffer (born in Menlo Park, California on December 25, 1896—died in Tangier, Morocco on January 28, 1964) was a textile designer primarily in the form of wall hangings, carpeting and rugs, howeve ...

; she also designed rugs. When she was 20 she designed the interior of the new family home at Leckhampton House. After her marriage, she worked in Nicholson's

Modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

architecture practice, where his student and protégé

Hugh Casson Sir Hugh Maxwell Casson (23 May 1910 – 15 August 1999) was a British architect. He was also active as an interior designer, as an artist, and as a writer and broadcaster on twentieth-century design. He was the director of architecture for t ...

and his wife

Margaret Margaret is a female first name, derived via French () and Latin () from grc, μαργαρίτης () meaning "pearl". The Greek is borrowed from Persian. Margaret has been an English name since the 11th century, and remained popular througho ...

also worked. EQ designed the interiors of Nicholson's building for the

London Gliding Club The London Gliding Club (LGC) is a members' club whose airfield is located at the foot of the Dunstable Downs. Many privately owned gliders are based there. It has the facilities to train pilots in powerless flight, and in the skills necessary t ...

Dunstable Dunstable ( ) is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Bedfordshire, England, east of the Chiltern Hills, north of London. There are several steep chalk escarpments, most noticeable when approaching Dunstable from the ...

in 1936. From about 1936 until 1950, EQ worked with her sister-in-law Nancy Nicholson, who had already printed textile designs both for her brother Ben Nicholson and for his wife

Barbara Hepworth Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth (10 January 1903 – 20 May 1975) was an English artist and sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism and in particular modern sculpture. Along with artists such as Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, Hepworth was a leadi ...

at her Poulk Press. EQ's designs from this time include ''Black Goose'' (1936), ''Daisy'' and ''Seaweed'' (1949). Some of these designs were later screen-printed by Edinburgh Weavers. One of her best-known designs is ''Runner Bean'', which dates from about 1950, and was used in Hugh Casson's furnishing of the

Royal Yacht A royal yacht is a ship used by a monarch or a royal family. If the monarch is an emperor the proper term is imperial yacht. Most of them are financed by the government of the country of which the monarch is head. The royal yacht is most often c ...

and for hand-printed wallpapers by Cole & Son. The archive of the

Whitworth Art Gallery The Whitworth is an art gallery in Manchester, England, containing about 55,000 items in its collection. The gallery is located in Whitworth Park and is part of the University of Manchester. In 2015, the Whitworth reopened after it was transfor ...

, Manchester, includes a collection of EQ's drawings and textiles. Some of her designs are still being commercially produced. For a period of only about fifteen years from about 1941, EQ worked intensely as a painter, in gouache, crayon and collage, in a style that owes something to

Georges Braque Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...

, whom she greatly admired. She had one show, with Peter Rose Pulham (1910–56) and

Keith Vaughan John Keith Vaughan (23 August 1912 – 4 November 1977), was a British painter. Biography Born at Selsey in West Sussex, Vaughan attended Christ's Hospital school. He worked in an advertising agency until the World War II, when as an intending ...

(1912–77), at the Hanover Gallery in 1950. Works from this period are in the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

, the New Hall Art Collection and the National Portrait Gallery; they have been compared to those of other artist-designers such as

Edward Bawden Edward Bawden, (10 March 1903 – 21 November 1989) was an English painter, illustrator and graphic artist, known for his prints, book covers, posters, and garden metalwork furniture. Bawden taught at the Royal College of Art, where he had be ...

(1903–89) and

Eric Ravilious Eric William Ravilious (22 July 1903 – 2 September 1942) was a British painter, designer, book illustrator and wood-engraver. He grew up in Sussex, and is particularly known for his watercolours of the South Downs and other English landsca ...

(1903–42).

Early life

Career

References

Further reading

See also