On several occasions Winifred Nicholson painted portraits of her children with the nurses who looked after them. Janet Heap accompanied Winifred and the family to Cornwall in 1928 and 1932, for example, and was depicted in Janet and Jacob (UCL Art Museum). Another nursemaid, Cissy Noble, travelled to Paris with the Nicholsons in the spring of 1930 at the time of Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood's exhibition at the Bernheim Gallery. She was portrayed in Kate and Cissy in Paris. Cissy Noble and Kate was most likely painted at the same time. Both pictures include curtains with a similar decorative pattern. A second painting on the reverse is in another hand, possibly that of Kate Nicholson who owned this painting for many years.

We are grateful to the artist’s grandson Jovan Nicholson for assisting with the cataloguing of this painting.