Jan Vermeer: Girl with a Red Hat (c1665), National Gallery, Washington.15. Pierre Auguste Renoir: Alfred Sisley and His Wife Marie (1868), Walraf- Richartz Museum, Cologne 16. J B S Chardin: Attributes of the Arts (1766), Hermitage, St Petersburg.Alternative titles were fine The “Giotto” and the “Raphael” may not be by them.. Andrea Mantegna: Madonna of Victory (1495-96), Louvre, Paris.10. Paul Gauguin: Vision After the Sermon (1888), National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh 11 Raphael: Pope Leo X (1516), Uffizi, Florence 12. Francisco Goya: Manuel Osorio de Zuniga (1788), Metropolitan Museum, New York 7. J A D Ingres: Charles-Joseph-Laurent Cordier (1811), Louvre, Paris 8.

Frans Hals: Peeckelhaering (1628-30), Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kassel 9. Giotto: Vision of the Chariot of Fire (c1297), San Francisco Upper Church, Assisi 4. Jacques-Louis David: Louise Trudaine (1791-92), Louvre, Paris.
5. Edgar Degas: Combing the Hair (1892-95), National Gallery, London 6. The pictures – some are cropped for the sake of space and clarity – are:

1.

Diego Velazquez: Pope Innocent X (1649), Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome 2 Henri Matisse: Red Studio (1911), Moma, New York 3. Did Nicholson ever portray her, in her younger days? It’s possible, and they could have had a good chat about the problems of extended families.! ‘William Nicholson – Landscape and Still-Life’: Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (01223 352124), to 25 Feb.. I note that one picture of a gold lustreware jug belongs to the Queen Mother. What a lucky old lady she is, to possess such a loveable painting. Paradoxically, Nicholson was less interested in light in his landscapes than in his table-top pictures He particularly fancied containers that reflect light Hence his fondness for lustreware.

But there’s nothing intrinsically posh in his repertoire of subjects and there’s no jewellery. I suppose he tired of such things when he was doing the portraits. For understandable reasons a number of these little pictures of objects are like wonderful passages that occur in grander paintings of important people in ceremonial poses. Nicholson was too clever to make this partialness into a fault, but still the thought remains.Especially when we look at the virtuoso handling of silver and gold on white linen tablecloths. No doubt his primary portrait activity has obscured Nicholson’s qualities from historians of modern art.