Bessie MacNicol
| Bessie MacNicol | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Elizabeth MacNicol 5 July 1869 Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom |
| Died | 4 June 1904 (aged 34) Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Education | Glasgow School of Art |
| Known for | painting |
| Movement | Glasgow Style, Impressionism |
| Spouse(s) | Alexander Frew |
Elizabeth "Bessie" MacNicol (1869–1904) was a Scottish painter and member of the Glasgow Girls group of artists affiliated with the Glasgow School of artists.
MacNicol was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on 5 July 1869, the daughter of Peter MacNicol, a teacher and school principal, and Mary Ann Matthews. Several of her siblings died in infancy (including her twin sister Mary), but she grew up with two surviving sisters with whom she shared a penchant for music. She had some health problems consequent on suffering from allergies during the summer months. She attended Glasgow School of Art from 1887 until 1892 and afterwards, at the urging of school director Francis Henry Newbery, studied art in Paris at the Académie Colarossi, which was one of the first of the Paris studios to offer classes in which women trained alongside men. She was thus part of the first wave of women artists who were crossing to Paris from the United Kingdom to further their art education as their male peers had been doing for several generations. However, she apparently did not gain much from her time at Académie Colarossi, feeling that she was being constantly repressed rather than encouraged.
On her return to Scotland, MacNicol moved back into the family home and not long afterwards acquired a studio in St Vincent Street. In 1893 she exhibited Fifeshire Interior at the Royal Scottish Academy (the only time she would exhibit there), and Study of a Head at the Royal Glasgow Institute. In 1895, she exhibited work at the Stephen Goodden Art Rooms in Glasgow, and in 1896 at the Munich Secession Exhibition. That year she spent time in the artist's colony of Kirkcudbright, where she painted the portrait of leading Glasgow artist Edward Atkinson Hornel. In 1899 she married Alexander Frew, a physician and artist, and they lived in the Hillhead area of Glasgow, where she set up a large studio at the back of the house. Both her parents died in 1903, and she was in the late stages of a pregnancy when she died in Glasgow on 4 June 1904, at the age of 34. Her husband remarried shortly before his own death by suicide in 1908, and his second wife sold the Hillhead house and all of MacNicol's paintings the same year. This could be one reason that so few of MacNicol's works and papers are known to exist; there are only a few letters and photographs, and no sketchbooks appear to have been found.
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