Winifred Nicholson

Winifred Nicholson painted most of her portraits in the period from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s, and they usually depict people who she knew well, including portraits of family members, helpers and friends. This lends a freshness and intimacy to her portraits. In this particular case Joanna Roberts was Winifred Nicholson’s niece, the daughter of her younger brother Wilfrid and Nan Roberts. Wilfrid Roberts was MP for Cumberland North from 1935 until 1950, and in the early 1930s farmed at Burtholme, not far from Winifred Nicholson’s home in Cumberland. In this charming portrait Joanna is sitting outside bathed in dazzling sunlight wearing a dress which she fondly and vividly remembered all her life. Joanna Matthews, as she became, was for many years a magistrate, a governor of the local school in Brampton, Cumbria, and later a leading light in the Oxfordshire Gardens Trust.

Winifred Nicholson had a clear affinity with children loving their spontaneity, innocence and youthfulness, and many of her finest portraits depict them, including her nephew Sam Graves (Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge), and her children Kate and Jake, Isle of Wight (Bristol Art Gallery), Jake and Kate on the Isle of Wight (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art), Janet and Jacob (UCL Art Museum).

Jovan Nicholson