Artists

Burr H. Nicholls

American, 1848-1915

Burr H. Nicholls was born December 1848 in Lockport, New York. He became a noted eastern landscape, figure and genre painter in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nicholls studied painting in Buffalo under L. G. Sellstedt before traveling to Paris to study with Charles Carolus-Duran. In France, he also painted at the artist colony in Pont Aven with Frank Penfold, another Buffalo native. Nicholls is well known for his European and Eastern American scenes, which are generally genre and street scenes.  His travels abroad are difficult to reconstruct. He is known to have studied watercolor with Rhoda Holmes in Italy. Nicholls meet his future wife, Rhoda Holmes, also an artists and future watercolor teacher, during a visit to Venice. Nicholls was painting in Buffalo in 1896, and he was there again in 1900 when he was active in the Buffalo Society of Artists. 

Exhibited:
Nicholls was a member of the Buffalo Society of Artists and he exhibited at the  National Academy of Art and Design, Boston Art Club, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and others. 

Museums & Collections:
His works are in the permanent collections of the Pennsylvania Fine Arts Academy, Effect of Sunlight; Peabody Institute, Baltimore, Hunting Up a Quotation; and Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, A Group of Fowls. 

References:
He is listed in numerous art reference books to include “Who Was Who in American Art (Falk);” “American Art Annual, Vol. 13;” “Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers (Fieldings);” “Index of Artists (Mallett);” “National Academy Exhibitions 1861-1900 (Kennedy);” “Smithsonian Inventory of Paintings (Smithsonian);” “Artist Biographies Master Index (McNeil);” “The Artist Blue Book (Dunbier);” “Art Across America (East) (Gerdts);” “Biographical Encyclopedia of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers of the US (Creps);” “The Dictionary of American Artists, Sculptors and Engravers (Young);”  “Allgemeines Kunstler-Lexikon, Leben und Werke der Beruhmtesten Bildenden Kunstler (Muller-Singer);”“Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Kunstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Thieme & Becker);” “Internationales Handbuch Aller Maler und Bildhauer des 19. Jahrhunderts (Busse);” and “Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs (Benezit).”