Lot 14: Noel Laura Nisbet (1887-1956)

Noel Laura Nisbet (1887-1956)
Self-portrait, sewing in an interior at Bath Cottage, Speen, Berkshire, circa 1918
with studio sale stamp (on the stretcher)
oil on canvas
24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm.)

Springfield, 1988, no. 69.

The Studio of Harry Bush, R.O.I. and Noel Laura Nisbet, R.I.; Christie's, London, 28 September 1984, lot 109 (part).

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.
Noel Laura Nisbet came from an artistic Scottish family and was the youngest daughter of Hume Nisbet, an artist, author and traveller. Her sister Margaret also became a painter. The family moved to London in 1887 and she won numerous awards while studying at the Clapham School of Art. In 1910 she married Harry Bush, a fellow student. Four years later her father set up his artistic daughters in two houses, with purpose-built attic studios, on an estate then being built in Merton Park, south west London. They were to live there for the rest of their lives; Harry Bush was to immortalise their world in his pictures of suburban London. Nisbet illustrated five books of fairy tales and legends and the majority of her Royal Academy exhibits (1914-1938) are of such subjects.

The present work is an interesting departure for the artist and depicts the interior of Bath Cottage, Speen, where Noel and their first daughter Hazel, born in 1916, spent the First World War, while Harry was enlisted into the army. The cosy domestic setting, with its patchwork chair cover and her partially finished embroidery is an glimpse of the artist's home from home.