Attributed to William Nicholson
British (1781 – 1844)
Oil on canvas – Tullymet House – Perthshire, Scotland
69 cm by 89 cm (27 inches by 35 inches)
Frame measures- 1080 cm by 1260 cm (425 inches by 496 inches)
Weight: 22 kg.
Applied later handwritten label to the back reading “ TULLYMET and group of LOISA, CHARLOTTE, ELIZA ,WILLIAM by W. NICOLSON E.R.A. 1824”
William Nicholson (25 December 1781 – 16 August 1844) was born on Christmas day at Ovingham, in Northumberland to James Nicholson the schoolmaster and his wife Elizabeth Orton, the second of the four sons. His father was appointed master of the grammar school in Newcastle-on-Tyne and the family settled there, with William studying painting under the Italian painter Boniface Muss or Musso. On leaving school he received commissions to paint portrait miniatures both in Newcastle and in Hull, where he painted several of the officers from a regiment stationed there. In 1808 he exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time, which included larger works, continuing to do so until 1822.
He moved to Edinburgh in 1814, where he painted portraits, landscapes, animal, architectural and genre subjects. In 1818 he began publishing his ‘Portraits of Distinguished Living Characters of Scotland’, a series of etchings based on his own paintings and those of other artists. In 1821, he married Maria Lamb, daughter of Walter Lamb of Edinburgh.
He was one of the founding members of the Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1826, and was its first secretary until 1830. He sent twenty-six works to its first exhibition in 1827, and exhibited continuously until his death by fever, in Edinburgh, on 16 Aug. 1844. He left two sons and two daughters.
Today his work is found in the National Gallery of Scotland, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Scottish Academy.
Dr William Dick, of Tullymet House, Perthshire (died 1821) had a daughter Eliza Serina Ann who was married to William George Harris (Second Lord Harris 1782–1845) on the 17th of October 1809. Eliza Serina Ann who died in 1817 had two sons and one daughter, George Francis Robert Harris (born 1810), William Lushington Thomas Harris (born 1814) and Charlotte Reid Harris (died 1818). It is probable that this painting more likely dates between 1815 and 1818 showing both William and Charlotte alongside Tullymet House.