Rhoda Holmes Nicholls

Rhoda Holmes Nicholls (1854-1930) stood as one of the most preeminent women in the world of American art at the turn of the twentieth century, distinguished as painter, teacher, and art critic. Born in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, she was the daughter of the Reverend William Groome Holmes, vicar of Littlehampton on the south coast, and his wife, Marian Cooke Holmes. Nicholls attended boarding school in South Kensington from the age of ten, and by sixteen she had committed herself to a life in art, entering the Royal Female School of Art in Bloomsbury. There she won the prestigious Queen's Scholarship, presented to her by the Duke of Edinburgh, and enjoyed the further honor of having Queen Victoria acquire one of her studies. She also studied briefly at Heatherley's and the Slade School of Art.

After the death of her father, Nicholls set aside her scholarship to pursue her studies in Italy, where she could stretch her modest inheritance and immerse herself in the artistic environment she called "the artist's paradise." Settling in Rome, she studied landscape painting with Cammarano and Vertunni and watercolor with Signor Carlandi, and she was elected a member of the Società degli Acquarellisti. She exhibited to praise from Queen Marguerita and received a memorable audience with Pope Leo XIII. She traveled with her brother to South Africa, where she painted and briefly ran an ostrich enterprise on his farm before returning to Europe.

In Venice, Nicholls met the American painter Burr H. Nicholls. The two married and sailed for America, settling first at the Sherwood Building in New York, where she raised their two children. She and her husband spent summers in Ellenville, East Gloucester, Kennebunkport, and Ogunquit, and she conducted large summer classes drawing pupils from across the country. For several years she also taught weekly classes in Philadelphia, Poughkeepsie, and Hartford, and she taught watercolor at Shinnecock alongside William Merritt Chase, who taught the oils.

Nicholls received important recognition throughout her career. Her watercolor The Scarlet Letter earned a bronze medal at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, a large oil took gold at the Prize Fund Exhibition in New York, and her Ostrich Farm was awarded silver at Nashville. She exhibited in Rome, Turin, Munich, London, and at major American venues. Alongside her studio practice, she served on the staffs of Art Interchange and Art Amateur and was for a time co-editor of Palette and Brush. She contributed illustrations, jointly with Childe Hassam and F. Hopkinson Smith, to William Dean Howells's Venetian Life.

Today her works are hard to come by and quite rare, though her credentials easily match those of many of her better-remembered contemporaries. She is appreciated as one of the significant transatlantic women artists of her era, whose long and adventurous life carried her from Victorian England through Italy, South Africa, and the American Northeast, all in devoted pursuit of a serious artistic career.