Sir William Nicholson 1872-1949

Lillian Browse, William Nicholson, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1956, p.39, no.28.

Mary Louise Logan was the daughter of Edith Logan and granddaughter of John Logan of Columbus who, as a famous Civil War general, is commemorated with a major equestrian statue in central Chicago. She married firstly into the St Paul de Sincay family, giving her connections to the Belgian Royal family, and secondly in 1928 to Major-General Sir Walter Joseph Maxwell-Scott.

Nicholson painted her portrait as a girl of thirteen in 1902 while he was living at Chaucer’s House, Woodstock to which he and his wife Mabel Pryde had moved in 1898. Nicholson was well-established as a portraitist by this time. His visible appreciation of Whistler had been evident in the marvellous portrait of Max Beerbohm (coll. Tate Britain, London) the previous year. The commission to paint Mary Louise had possibly arisen from Nicholson’s first trip to New York in 1901-2 where he had been asked to do portrait drawings of prominent Americans by Harper’s Magazine.

The composition owes much to Manet’s device, and that of Dutch masters of the seventeenth century, of finding a logical reason to do a half-length portrait. Here the back of a horse, just seen, provides the opportunity. Nicholson had used the idea to great effect with portraits of W.E. Henley (1900, coll. Tate Britain) and The Landlord (1902, coll. Manchester City Art Gallery), as did other artists of the period, notably William Orpen. Indeed Mary Louise Logan anticipates Orpen’s Portrait of Gardenia St George with Riding Crop (sold in these rooms, 18th May 2001, lot 191), although in this particular work Orpen dispenses with the half-length format. In many other respects, and despite the fact that the two paintings are separated by a decade, there are fascinating comparisons to be drawn between the two sitters’ green riding habits, pale cravats, gloves, plumes and, above all, their confident adoption of a provocative stare.