Egon Nicholas

Artist. In 1939 he moved from the Czech Republic to England, where he began drawing film posters. In 1947 he enlisted as a war artist in the British Army. That same year he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. From 1946 to 1950 he worked as a senior lecturer in fine art at the University of London, and also lectured at the National Gallery. In the 1950s he became an established "society" portrait artist in Britain, whose many models included Helen Mirren, Somerset Maugham and L. S. Lowry, as well as members of the aristocratic and royal families of Britain, Greece and Saudi Arabia. Since the 1970s he has worked in watercolors, depicting landscapes of Jordan and Greece.