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Lot Essay
Noel Nisbet was the daughter of the Scottish artist and writer Hume Nisbet (1849-1923). She married the landscape painter Harry Bush (1883-1957), and they settled in 1911 in a house specially built with a studio on the top floor for Noel in Merton, south-west London. Bush came to painting slightly later, and became known as 'the Painter of the Suburbs' as his work heavily focused on the area around their home.
Noel's pictures, in contrast, are imaginative renderings of mythical and medievalist themes, with an extraordinary intensity and richness. She is often referred to as 'the last Pre-Raphaelite', and both her subject matter and style clearly owe much to that group. She studied at The Royal College of Art, where she won three gold medals and the Princess of Wales’ Scholarship, established in 1863 to reward the most distinguished female art student in the U.K. She first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1914, and showed there regularly throughout her life, as well as extensively at the Royal Institute. She was also a well-known illustrator of fairy stories. The present work depicts Pan and a maenad grouped around a herm, which was an ancient form of way-marker sometimes associated with Pan's father Hermes. Unusually, the head on the herm tilts downwards as if he, too, is moved by Pan's piping. Another work on the theme of Pan, The Dance, or The Followers of Pan, is in the Ulster Museum, Belfast, and Pan and the Lovers was sold at Sotheby's, London, 6 November 1995, lot 76.
Noel's pictures, in contrast, are imaginative renderings of mythical and medievalist themes, with an extraordinary intensity and richness. She is often referred to as 'the last Pre-Raphaelite', and both her subject matter and style clearly owe much to that group. She studied at The Royal College of Art, where she won three gold medals and the Princess of Wales’ Scholarship, established in 1863 to reward the most distinguished female art student in the U.K. She first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1914, and showed there regularly throughout her life, as well as extensively at the Royal Institute. She was also a well-known illustrator of fairy stories. The present work depicts Pan and a maenad grouped around a herm, which was an ancient form of way-marker sometimes associated with Pan's father Hermes. Unusually, the head on the herm tilts downwards as if he, too, is moved by Pan's piping. Another work on the theme of Pan, The Dance, or The Followers of Pan, is in the Ulster Museum, Belfast, and Pan and the Lovers was sold at Sotheby's, London, 6 November 1995, lot 76.