International studio (44.1911)

IVilllain Nickolson

classified and tabulated ; next he will be abused as
a kind of discordant interruption in a general
harmony of disagreement; then he will be tolerated
as an inconvenient exception but one which must
be recognised because it cannot be got rid of; and
at last he will be put on a duly decorated pedestal
with his own group of worshippers all ready to
swear that there is no one else like him and that he
is the one shining light in the art of his times.
Not many men, however, arrive at the pedestal
stage. There are too many disabilities to overcome,
too many pitfalls in the form of temptations to take
the line of least resistance and to accept an easy
popularity by some surrender of independence, for
any but the most confident and convinced worker
to win through to the end along the path on which
he set out. Such a number of artists have begun
with enthusiasm to carve out a career through the
thickets of popular misunderstanding and bad taste,
only to turn back half-way to trot along the nice,
smooth, level road which ends in the city of lost
ambitions; such a number have left in the thickets
the bones of their reputa¬
tions and have been blotted
out of memory by the over¬
growth which in so short
a time has hidden all the
evidences of their labour;
only here and there is the
track cut straight through
all the tangle to the clear
ground beyond where the
great ones dwell—where the
pedestals stand in a serene
open space and the air is
perfumed with the smoke of
incense.
It would, probably, be
not quite fair to suggest that
Mr. William Nicholson has
already arrived at this
■elysium where the few great
masters sit in dignified seclu¬
sion. Admission to an
elysium suggests the end ot
striving and the attainment
of a position in which the
man who has fought well can
rest upon his laurels and
watch placidly his worship¬
pers bowing down before
him. But Mr. Nicholson
is a young man, and he
has certainly not done all
4

that he intends and is fit to do. Much as he has
already accomplished—and his record is indis-
putably distinguished—there are possibilities in
him which suggest that the place he occupies to-
day is only an intermediate one and that he is still
a long way from the quiet spot where he will
eventually settle down to contemplate with satis-
faction his past labours.
As it happens, Mr. Nicholson has all the qualifi-
cations which are required by the man who decides
to disregard the prevalent tendencies of the art of
the age in which he lives and to strike a new note
in matters of practice. He is, to begin with,
genuinely original, a frankly individual thinker
who does not derive his opinions from other
people but forms them for himself in accordance
with the promptings of his temperament. He does
not accept any of the fashionable conventions
which satisfy the men who do not take a properly
personal view of their responsibilities ; but equally
he does not set out to deliberately outrage even
the conventions which he would be the least


“first communion day”

BY WILLIAM NICHOLSON
C By special permission)