ABSTRACT
Sir William Nicholson, an artist whose work enriched children’s literature and culture from the beginning of his career, was an Englishman who studied at Julian’s Academy in Paris in 1891. As a member of the brilliant crowd of artistic, literary, and theatrical talents centered in London in the fin-de-siècle and as a countryman who loved the English landscape, many of the influences passed on in his works for children can be seen as native to his time and place. But children’s culture and Nicholson’s contributions to it also owe a great deal to influences from the Parisian avant-garde that discussing Nicholson’s formative sojourn in Paris helps to articulate. Although his important picture books came after World War I had changed his world, Nicholson’s gaiety, coupled with seriousness about artistic production, brings to mind the visual images of bohemian Paris.
