James Craig Nicoll Art

Noted marine painter and etcher James Craig Nicoll was born in New York City in 1846. He studied art under Mauritz F.H. de Haas, a well-known marine painter who worked for the Royal Dutch Court and as the official U. S. government artist of Admiral Farragut’s flagship during the Civil War. Nicoll was a prolific artist who worked in the luminist style during the 1860s and 1870s, and most often painted seascapes of the New England and Long Island coasts. From the 1880s on, he utilized a more muted, earthy palette. Nicoll exhibited New England seascapes as early as 1868 and regularly showed works that bear titles such as Rhode Island Coast, Near Point Judith, and Thatcher’s Island, Massachusetts. Nicoll also painted in Shrub Oak, Westchester County, New York, where he owned a weekend and summer home. In 1879, Nicoll taught etching to his good friend Kruseman Van Elten, also a noted marine painter.

In 1880, Nicoll was elected an associate of the National Academy, and he became a full Academician in 1885. From 1867 to 1900, Nicoll exhibited annually at the National Academy of Design. He also exhibited at the American Watercolor Society, American Fund Society, New York Etching Club, Artists’ Aid Society, New York Municipal Art Society, and the Century Association. His honors included medals from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1888), New Orleans Exposition (1885), American Art Association (1888), Atlanta Exposition (1895), and the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo (1901). Nicoll’s paintings are housed in important public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Newark Museum, New Jersey; Mattatuck Museum, Woodbury, Connecticut; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.