Description: Condition A. Original colour lithograph from "Twelve Portraits" Second series, published by William Heinemann, London 1902.

Presented in 16 x 20 in. acid free, archival museum mat, with framing labels. Ready to frame. Shipped boxed flat via Fedex.
Certificate of Authenticity.
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Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903)
Leo’s election changed the course of the papacy. He was a modern man of his times, and he worked, by preaching and writing, to bring Catholic attitudes into the modern world without losing it's core. He opened the Vatican secret archives to scholars, and reminded Catholic historians that nothing but the whole truth must be found in their work. He encouraged Bible study, set up the permanent Biblical Commission in 1902, and sponsored the Catholic University at Washington, DC, USA. First pope to have his voice recorded. The length of his reign, over 25 years, allowed him to stock the college of cardinals with many excellent men; he created 147 of them. (http://saints.sqpn.com/pope0256.htm)

"Nicholson did this image just after his
association with James Pryde as The Beggarstaff Brothers had come to an end. But his revolutionary approach to design which marked the Beggarstaff posters, found further expression in the small-scale woodcuts on which he then concentrated.

William Nicholson's woodblock prints of the 1890's were amongst the most revolutionary British print images of the era. They used a treatment of form, with a stylized simplification of shape, and a handling of perspective and picture space which had had no precedent in British art. Influences of Japanese art, and a parallel thinking to, if not a direct knowledge of, the ideas of Toulouse Lautrec and of the Nabis painters in Paris at the same period can certainly be felt, although there is no record that Nicholson had actually studied either at this date." (Weston)