Beggarstaff brothers biography

They set up their design business in 1894.
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The Beggarstaffs, otherwise J. & W. Beggarstaff, was the pseudonym used by the British artists William Nicholson and James Pryde for their collaborative.

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In 1894, Scottish artist James Pryde teamed with English artist William Nicholson to create posters under the pseudonym "the Beggarstaff Brothers" (a name they found on a torn sack of grain in an old stable yard).

Pryde and Nicholson brought very different perspectives to their partnership. Pryde was tall and heavy, while Nicholson was short and thin. Pryde grew up in a noisy, eccentric household of "violent views" while Nicholson was raised in a "gentle, well-bred, well-mannered atmosphere." Pryde was outspoken and gregarious, while Nicholson was quiet and detached. Pryde worked very casually while Nicholson was serious and driven. Recalled Pryde, "our opinions on artistic matters differed widely."

If those weren't enough causes for friction, Nicholson fell in love with Pryde's younger sister against her mother's wishes. Colin Campbell's excellent book on the Beggarstaffs reports that "after a courtship conducted largely, it seems, among the coalsacks in the cellar of the Pryde's Bloomsbury home, the couple married in secret at Ruslip on 25 April 1893."

Who could ask for a be

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Beggarstaffs

Beggarstaffs J. & W. Beggarstaff
The Beggarstaffs, drawing of William Nicholson (left) and James Pryde by Phil May (1864–1903), first published in The Studio, September 1895

The Beggarstaffs, otherwise J. & W. Beggarstaff, was the pseudonym used by the British artists William Nicholson and James Pryde for their collaborative partnership in the design of posters and other graphic work between 1894 and 1899. They are sometimes referred to as the Beggarstaff Brothers, but did not use this name.^[1]

The partnership

William Nicholson met his future wife Mabel "Prydie" Pryde in 1888 or 1889 at Hubert Herkomer's art school at Bushey, Herts, where both were students. He met her elder brother James, who was also an artist, at about the same time. In 1893, Nicholson and Prydie eloped and were secretly married at Ruislip on 25 April. They went to live in what had been a pub, the Eight Bells at Denham, Bucks. James Pryde soon visited them, and stayed for almost two years.^[1] Other visitors to the house included

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Beggarstaff brothers biography of william nicholson

His best work has a subtlety, virtuosity and individual voice that places it with the finest of its period. There he met fellow student Mabel Pryde, who was to become his first wife. She introduced him to her brother, the artist James Pryde. In Pryde and Nicholson, as J. Beggarstaff, began to collaborate on a series of posters which were revolutionary in style with their boldness of outline, simplicity of treatment and striking silhouettes, and their flat, pure colours.

Sir William Newzam Prior Nicholson was a British painter of still-life, landscape and portraits.

The Beggarstaff partnership was short-lived but the originality of their posters was widely recognised. In the following years Nicholson evolved out of the posters a personal style which he began to exploit through the medium of the woodcut. In this venture he had the good fortune to be encouraged by Whistler who recommended him to the publisher William Heinemann.

Henley, in and The Square Book of Animals in These were collected in the two series of Twelve Portrait