Anne Stirling Maxwell (1906–2011)

Anne Stirling Maxwell, later to live to the remarkable age of one hundred and five, was painted by Nicholson in 1910 when she was approximately four years old. Child portraiture formed a minor but consistent strand of Nicholson's commissioned work, requiring the painter to adapt his characteristic economy to subjects whose natural energy resisted the stillness of formal sitting. The Maxwell family connection to Pollok House — the grand eighteenth-century Glasgow mansion that now houses the Stirling Maxwell art collection — places this portrait within a context of aristocratic Scottish patronage. The house and its contents, including this painting, are now managed by Glasgow Life.

Nicholson handled the child's portrait with a lightness of palette and touch appropriate to the subject's age — the figure is rendered in soft, warm tones against a gentle background. The characteristic graphic simplicity is present but softened, with the face given the most careful attention while the surrounding figure and setting are handled with sympathetic looseness.