Burr H. Nicholls is best known for his Breton scenes, which tend to be street scenes of peasant figures silhouetted against brightly sunlit walls. His career was less as an expatriate but no more easily traced. While in Venice he met the well known English watercolor specialist Rhoda Holmes; after they married they settled in New York City, where she became a highly regarded watercolor teacher.

Nicholls was painting in Buffalo in 1896, and he was certainly there again in 1900 when he was active in the Buffalo Society of Artists and may have remained in the city during the early years of the present century.

Born December, 1848, in Lockport, New York. He studied with Sellstedt in Buffalo, and with Carolus-Duran in Paris. Represented at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts by "Effect of Sunlight"; at Peabody Institute, Baltimore, by "Hunting Up a Quotation"; in Fine Arts Academy, Buffalo, by "A Group of Fowls." He died May 12, 1915, in Stamford, CT.

Listed:
Art Across America, Two Centuries Of Regional Painting Across America
Mantle Fielding's
Who Was Who In American Art
Mallett, Index of Artist
Thieme-Becker

Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton