A presentation copy inscribed on the front-end-paper "To Sir Alexander Allan Bart., with the respectful compliments of the author." Hailed by his contemporaries as the "Father of watercolour painting in this country", Francis Nicholson's career spanned nine decades. He witnessed the founding of the Royal Academy, the opening of the first public 'Picture Gallery', the founding of the National Gallery, the growth of provincial Fine Arts Societies and not least, the Inaugural Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Watercolours of which he was a founder member. He was born in Pickering, North Yorkshire and for some fifty years painted portraits and scenes mainly in the northern counties. After his marriage, he worked from Whitby, Knaresborough, and Ripon before moving his family to London. For a further forty years, he continued to paint in watercolours and established himself not only as a fashionable drawing master but as an early exponent of the newly discovered medium of "lithography"- the art of making prints from drawings on stone. According to Thornbury (1861) J. M. W. Turner described Francis Nicholson as "my model", and once related to Mr. Munro how he had copied Nicholson's paintings in his youth. (Ken Spelman 76/42).