Winifred NICHOLSON (1893 – 1981)
The Dacre Beasts, c.1910
Watercolour on paper
13 ¾ x 9 inches / 35 x 23 cm
Provenance:
Private Collection, Cumbria
Literature:
Unknown Colour, compiled Andrew Nicholson, published by Faber & Faber, 1987, ill. b/w. p.29
The Dacre Beasts were commissioned by Lord Dacre for Naworth Castle, who fought with Henry Tudor against Richard III at Bosworth Field when he was 22 and at Flodden in 1513. The red bull was Dacre’s crest; the crowned salmon that of Elizabeth de Greystoke with whom Dacre eloped in 1488; the black gryphon belonged to his ancestor Ranulph de Moulton. Lord Dacre died in 1525. In the 1930s when Winifred needed to use a different name so as to distinguish her abstract paintings from those of her husbands, rather than choose her maiden name Roberts, or her mothers maiden name Howard, she settled on Dacre.