Andrew Nicholl

Who was Andrew Nicholl?

Andrew Nicholl RHA was an Irish painter. He was a founding member of the Belfast Association of Artists and in 1847 was elected as an associate member to the Royal Hibernian Academy, becoming a full member in 1860.

The son of a bootmaker, and younger brother of painter William Nicholl, Andrew was apprenticed to a printer and worked as a compositor on The Northern Whig. He found patronage under Sir James Emerson Tennent, who funded a trip to London in 1830-1832. He exhibited his work at the RHA in Dublin and at the Royal Academy, London.

Tennent's patronage also secured for him an appointment as teacher of landscape drawing, painting and design at the Colombo Academy in Sri Lanka. He rewarded his patron by illustrating parts of the latter's descriptive book about the island, Ceylon, Physical, Historical and Topographical.A watercolour entitled The Great Sphinx with pyramid of Khufu and another Boats of Aden indicate other travel.

Queen Victoria purchased several of his drawings in 1858 and 1870. The Ulster Museum has a collection of about 380 of his watercolours and drawings. A book containing brief biographical details and reproductions of Nicholl's 1828 paintings of the Antrim coast was privately published by the Glens of Antrim Historical Society in about 1983.