Andrew Nicholl RHA
Artist Bio
Andrew Nicholl was an Irish painter who favoured watercolors and one of the founding members of the Belfast association of Artists. From 1832, Nicholl exhibited at the RA and the RHA and then in 1847 he became an associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy, becoming a full member in 1860.
Nicholl used a technique on many of his paintings called “sgraffito” which is a term used to describe the action of scraping in order to highlight certain aspects of his work, such as flowers in a landscape. Comments on these works include, ‘they would appear to be totally original compositions, and because the scale of the flowers and building is so irrational they have a surrealist quality…it is the quality which makes them the most haunting Irish paintings of the nineteenth century’
Andrew’s works can be seen in the British Museum and in the Victoria and Albert Museum.