Westminster Bridge from Lambeth Palace, London

Nicholson lived for the first thirty years of his life in Yorkshire and was primarily a painter of landscape. In 1803 he moved to London and developed a technique of duplicating his more complicated topographical drawings by rubbing black-lead into the lines of a soft-ground etching and taking further impressions that he could then vary and colour (see M. Hardie, Water-Colour Painting in Britain, vol. I, London, 1966, p. 206). Nicholson also travelled up to Scotland with his patron the Marquess of Bute. He was financially successful and became one of the founder members of the Old Water-colour Society.