Untitled

Artist Biography: 1921-2009. Born in Montréal. His parents died while he was a child, and by fourteen he would work a wide variety of jobs in order to funding his painting. He was self-taught, as there was little money to during the Depression to afford formal art studies. His subject matter often recorded the daily activities of the poorer people of Montréal with Louis Muhlstock. He received instruction in drawing from F.H. Varley when he lived in Ottawa with his brother from 1931 to 1939. Nichols was commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada in 1943 to execute paintings of the Canadian Merchant Navy. He was appointed an Official War Artist in 1944, when he joined the Canadian Navy. In 1947, he was awarded the unusual honour of a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative painting. In his drawings, Nicholas does not shy away from the ever-present spectre of death, a quality underlined by the blackness of the medium in many cases. The drawings emphasize the figure and face, whose gestures and expressions are often exaggerated. https://www.robertsgallery.net/gallery-artist/jack-nichols/; https://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/artists/nichols1eng.html