William Nicholson painted in white ducks and patent leather shoes. In photographs and caricatures his neat head sits on high white collars. He liked spotted shirts and fancy waistcoats. He was fun to be with but unrevealing about his art. His paintings and woodcuts give great pleasure; but no telling clumsiness draws us in: no impossible anatomy of the kind that makes Cézanne a challenge, none of the raw excitement of Expressionism, none of his son Ben's abstract chill.

LRB 18 November 2004 | PDF Download