ERSKINE NICOL(1825—1904)
Erskine Nicol was born in Leith, Scotland, in 1825, and studied art at the Trustee’s Academy, Edinburgh, where his teachers included Sir William Allan and Thomas Duncan. He worked for some time at the Leith Academy before moving to Ireland for a four-year period between 1846 and 1850. There he received a teaching appointment from the Department of Science and Art in Dublin. The pictures Nicol painted during his Irish sourn explore the social life of the country, often in a humorous and satirical manner. Many of the Irish characters in his well-composed and meticulously executed genre scenes are not far removed from the world of the stage and farce. He could be offensive and coarse, stretching his humorous spirit too far.Nicol returned to Edinburgh in 1850 and was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1855 and a full academician in 1859. While living in Scotland he continued to paint Irish scenes. He had an excellent memory for detail and he posed his studio models in a theatrical way, which heightened the emotional response evoked by his subjects. The racial humour of many of Nicol’s Irish scenes sometimes yields to sympathy and compassion. The pathetic scene in An Ejected Family (painted in Edinburgh in 1853) shows a young workman with his wife and baby, an elderly man, his head bowed, holding a long walking stick, and two children to the right lying against a grass mound and staring at the thatched cottage from which the family has been evicted. The young labourer is characterised in the stereotype Irish costume of breeches, long coat, shirt and hat. He is staring at his former home with a forlorn expression on his face. His wife looks up at him for guidance, but he appears to have none to offer.The strongest feature of Nicol’s paintings is frequently the landscape background. In An Ejected Family the leaden sky overhangs a brooding landscape, which has been rendered precisely and efficiently. The colours are strong and luminous, the effects of light and shade worked to suit the sad mood of the scene.