Relative Ties

Relative Ties explores the Nicholson women’s artistic legacy across three generations, highlighting matrilineal influence, creative collaborations, textiles and painting. 

Relative Ties highlights the work of three generations of women artists from the illustrious Nicholson family – Mabel Nicholson, Nancy Nicholson, EQ Nicholson and Louisa Creed – and explores what women inherit from their mothers, what can be passed down matrilineal lines and the importance of siblings to a creative practice. It brings together designs, paintings, preparatory drawings, textiles and wallpaper, alongside unprecedented insights into the tools and techniques the artists used. 

Together, the Nicholson women – Mabel, her daughter Nancy, daughter-in-law EQ, and EQ’s daughter Louisa Creed – form a celebrated line of artists working from the late nineteenth century to the present day across a multiplicity of spaces, contexts and mediums, ranging from paintings and works on paper to wallpaper and fabric.

Published on the occasion of an exhibition at The Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, this catalogue also includes a newly commissioned work by contemporary artist Katie Schwab (b. 1985) responding directly to the Nicholson women’s legacy.