Phillida Nicholson obituary Dilys Neill
My cousin, the artist Phillida Nicholson, who has died at the age of 96, was a talented landscape painter, printmaker and tapestry maker, and an intrepid traveller.
She was born in north Wales, and her lifelong home was a small cottage in the Clwydian mountains above the village of Bodfari, accessed by a farm track and supplied with water from a spring. She grew up there as the youngest of three children of Molly (nee Clark) and Richard Nicholson, and was so petite that she was described by her father as “the pocket edition”. With her sister, Joan, and brother, David, Phillida roamed the local countryside on foot or with ponies, and recalled walking down the mountain in all weathers to catch the train from Bodfari to school in Denbigh. Later she went to boarding school in Yorkshire.
14 December 2020
Arthur Rackham s illustrations have adorned A Christmas Carol and the pages of some of the world s best-loved children s books, including Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and Grimms Fairy Tales. To celebrate his long association with the festive season, we revisit his most magical works.
The Meeting of Oberon and Titania, 1908 (Christie s Images / Bridgeman Images)
British artist Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) was the pre-eminent illustrator of the early 20th century. His imaginative colour plates of gossamer fairies, mischievous goblins and gnarled trees enchanted and petrified readers in equal measure.
The art historian and broadcaster Kenneth Clark, author and presenter of seminal BBC TV series Civilisation, wrote of his fear at even opening the pages of his Grimms Fairy Tales book - such were the images of terror .