A masterclass in drawing from life

The quality of artist Nicholas C William’s work was described as “astounding” by celebrated London Evening Standard art critic the late Brian Sewell – and it’s not hard to see why. Heavily influenced by the Old Masters, his paintings are magnificently impressive, demanding attention.

A new exhibition at the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro uniquely juxtaposes a central element of Nicholas’s work, his life drawings, with Master drawings by Guercino, Anthony van Dyck, Theodore Géricault and John Singer Sargent amongst others. Carefully selected from the Royal Institution of Cornwall’s permanent collection in its 200th anniversary year, the work of the Old Masters highlights the enduring practice of drawing the nude direct from the model. Over centuries, artists have conveyed and employed the nude in order to create a narrative or simply produce an image that allows us to reflect upon ourselves. Williams’ contribution reveals

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how the practice remains central to a figurative painter today.

“It’s easy to feel apprehensive about the prospect of exhibiting alongside such company, particularly as they are the artists I’ve turned to all my life,” says Nicholas “The drawings curator Michael Harris and I have chosen, range from preparatory studies and imaginary scenes to finished drawings. Decorative flourishes and affectations are absent as they serve no purpose in conveying form or advancing an idea.”

Around the time the museum show opens, the Royal Academy of Art in London is staging what is expected to be a centenary exhibition of drawings by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.

“That is certain to spark renewed interest in drawing direct from the model, something that’s been central to my work for over thirty years,” says Nicholas. “While paintings urge you to stand back, demanding distance, drawings beckon you in. Great works are locked chambers of energy and time and nowhere is this clearer than in drawings. When you look at a particular line that might be three or four hundred years old, you can actually see the speed of that line. What you cannot see or know is the time spent looking between the making of those marks.”

He estimates spending between eight to twelve hours each day painting and drawing – much of it in his shadowy, atmospheric studio – a former lifeboat station that’s located just above rocks and sea on the north Cornish coast. It’s the perfect setting for a man who confesses to being almost equally passionate about surfing as he is to putting pencil to paper or paint to canvas.

“I used to surf twice a day but don’t have the time to do that now,” he says.

“Surfing is what drew me to Cornwall thirty years ago and I still love to get in the water as often as I can.”

Someone who is clearly

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