Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ MacNicol (1869 – 1904) was a Scottish painter from Glasgow, a teacher’s daughter. She has been compared to French impressionist, Berthe Morisot.
Fortunately for Bessie, women were able to flourish in Glasgow during a “period of enlightenment” that took place between 1885 and 1920, where women were actively pursuing art careers. She attended the Glasgow School of Art, which had a significant period of international visibility. It was an environment in which women could flourish, both as students and as teachers.
Sold at auction 2022: $80,000
Art critics of the time praised MacNicol for her expressive and vigorous style of painting, comparing her favorably with male contemporaries. MacNicol’s paintings in oil and watercolor are influenced by the plein air tradition (the practice of painting outdoors) as well as by the 19th-century American, James McNeil Whistler, though I see little resemblance in their styles.
At the urging of the her art school’s director, Bessie studied art in Paris at the Académie Colarossi, which was one of the first of the Paris studios to offer classes to women. She was part of the first wave of women artists who were crossing to Paris from the UK to further their art education. However, she thought that she was being constantly repressed rather than encouraged.
On her return to Scotland, MacNicol moved back to her family’s home and not long afterwards acquired a studio nearby.
Bessie liked her hats!
(so do I )
When Bessie was 30, she married Alexander Frew, a physician and artist, She set up a large studio at the back of their Glasgow home. Bessie MacNicol was in the late stages of a pregnancy when she died from complications of pre-eclampsia in 1904. Her husband remarried shortly before his own death by suicide in 1908, and his second wife sold the Hillhead house and all of MacNicol’s paintings. This could be one reason that so few of MacNicol’s works and papers are known to exist; there are only a few letters and photographs and no sketchbooks.
Bessie MacNicol is well represented in public collections. particularly at the National Galleries of Scotland.
Burkhauser, Jude. “Restored to a Place of Honour.” Glasgow Girls: Women in
Art and Design 1880–1920. Edinburgh: Canongate Press,1993. 19–26.
Caw, James Lewis. Scottish Painting, Past and Present, 1620-1908. 1908.
Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing. 2009.
