Rhoda Holmes Nicholls was an American artist and educator. She is represented in the principal museums and galleries.
Background
Rhoda Holmes Nicholls was born on March 28, 1854 in Coventry, England. She was the daughter of the Reverend William Grome Holmes, a graduate of Oxford University and vicar of Little Hampton, and Marion (Cooke) Holmes, she was named Rhoda Carleton Marion Holmes.
Education
Governesses were her first teachers but as she developed a marked talent for art she was sent to London, to the Bloomsbury School of Art, where she won the Queen's Scholarship, a prize of sixty pounds for three years. She also studied in one of the schools of the Kensington Museum. Lured by the brilliant color of the South, she sacrificed two years of the Queen's prize to go to Italy, where she studied with Vertunni and Cammerano in Rome.
Career
Nicholls became a member of the Circello Artistico Club, in which were gathered artists of many nationalities who criticized each other's work. Her own work immediately attracted attention and she exhibited in Rome, Turin, the Royal Academy in London, and elsewhere.
She spent three years in South Africa on her brother's large ostrich farm, returning to England with many beautiful canvases of rich and brilliant colors in oil and water-color.
She was active as a teacher, her pupils coming from all parts of the country, especially for out-of-door study.
For many years she was in charge of the water-color department at the William Chase School at Shinnecock. She also taught at the Art Students' League, in New York, and for many years conducted summer classes at Gloucester and Provincetown, Massachussets, or at Kennebunkport.
She was on the staff of the Art Interchange and the Art Amateur and was co-editor of Palette and Brush.
Mrs. Nicholls was also known as an illustrator. Her work ranged all along the line of painting, water-color, wash drawings, crayons, and pastels. She had few rivals and her acute knowledge of drawing and genius for composition are apparent in all her work.
By having a saturated blotting paper under her water-color paper she could work with more freedom and less speed because the paper could be kept wet indefinitely.
Her watercolors are well known through their repeated reproduction.
She died at Stamford, Connecticut, having been a sufferer from arthritis for several years.
Achievements
Views
Aside from her professional activities Rhoda was an early champion of the political emancipation of women.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"In her two works 'Cherries' and 'A Rose, ' Mrs. Rhoda Holmes Nicholls shows us a true water-color, executed by a master hand. The subject of each is slight, each stroke of her brush is made once and for all, with a precision and dash that are inspiriting, and you have in each painting the sparkle, the deft lightness of touch, the instantaneous impression of form and coloring that a water-color should have".
Connections
While in Italy she met in Venice Burr H. Nicholls, an American painter. They were married in Lyminster, Sussex, England, in 1884 and they sailed for America almost immediately. A daughter, a son, and two grand-children survived her.