Castle Beck, Naworth Castle

Naworth Castle in north east Cumberland belonged to Winifred Nicholson’s grandparents, George and Rosalind Howard, 9^th Earl and Countess of Carlisle. She spent large periods of her childhood at the castle and it was where she received some of her first painting lessons from George Howard, a painter who had been friends with many of the pre-Raphaelites. For a period after the Second World War, her parents rented the castle and she painted a number of views there (see for example, The Glen, Naworth, J. Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson: Liberation of Colour, London, 2016, p. 97, also an autumnal picture).

The view of Castle Beck, Naworth Castle is from one of the towers looking down onto the beck which runs close to the castle. Winifred clearly relished the autumns in Cumberland writing ‘The autumn is best here after the early spring’. And in another letter, ‘We have wonderfully sunny days. Sunlight in Cumberland after all the rain is like no sunlight anywhere else ... The little crab apples have turned scarlet and the barley gold. I shall cut it tomorrow and make plum jam this afternoon’ (op. cit.).

It is notable that the picture belonged to Lady Carlisle, who moved back into the castle after Winifred’s parents.