Private collection, UK

1980-1981: Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Stoke on Trent City Museum and Art Gallery; Britstol City Art Gallery; Cartwright Hall, Bradford.
The Collections of Edinburgh Libraries and Museums and Galleries (permanent collection).

Duncan Robinson, William Nicholson: Paintings, Drawings & Prints (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1980).

''An Alphabet' is a series of lithograph prints. Nicholson completed them in 1897, submitting 'A' and 'D' for approval with William Heinemann who went on to publish them in 1898. 'V is for Villain' is perhaps the final companion piece to Nicholson’s ‘Urchin’ and ‘Robber’ prints, through which a moral narrative is suggested by the gradual degradation into a life of crime and which culminates in the ‘Villain’ in his old age. These characters and their moral undertones would also have been more than familiar to Nicholson's audience due to the earlier works of, for example, Charles Dickens. The figure we see here is clothed in such a way as to suggest his untrustworthy character. We can see little of his face and he holds a hidden object in his crossed arms behind his back.

William Nicholson (1872-1949) was an accomplished portrait, landscape and still-life painter. He also designed costumes and sets for a number of theatre productions. Yet 'An Alphabet' is perhaps one of Nicholson's better known bodies of work, and incorporates characters spanning different time periods, occupations, social status and gender. They also encompass a whole cross-section of nineteenth-century British society and include a milk maid, an earl, a dandy and a yokel, a quaker, a trumpeter, and a flower girl.

Nicholson's public reputation as an artist was secured when, in the same year he executed the alphabet series, he completed a woodcut of Queen Victoria. After 1900 his work focussed more on landscape painting and portraiture, but the works he produced as a printmaker continue to be sought after and are held in high regard. His work can be found in public galleries across the UK and in national and international archival collections, museums, and institutions. He was appointed a Trustee of the Tate Gallery from 1934-39 and knighted in 1936.