Description
In 1940 he was commissioned as an official war artist, first with the Czech army, then posted with the British army to Basra. After the war he taught at Sir John Cass College and gave weekly lectures at the National Gallery, and in 1947 was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Art.
Nicholas’ first experience of Greece came in 1949, when he was taken by the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans (UNSCOB) to capture scenes from the final battles of the Greek Civil War.
After the war, Nicholas made his name as a portrait painter, particularly of Middle Eastern royalty. Later, from the 1970s, he specialised as a watercolourist depicting landscapes, first in Jordan and during the last thirty years in Greece.
In 1978, he married Matti (Matrona) Xylas, who comes from a long tradition of Greek ship-owners and charitable donors. The couple made their home in Greece and both became enthusiastic and generous patrons of many individuals and organisations committed to the study and promotion of Hellenic culture of all historical periods.
In 1989 Nicholas gave inspirational support to the newly founded Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s. He instituted the annual Runciman lecture at King’s, named in honour of his old friend and historian of Byzantium and the Crusades, Sir Steven Runciman, one of the most eloquent historians of the twentieth century, with a gift for bringing the results of original scholarship to a broad public. This tradition is maintained in these lectures, which each year bring a capacity audience to the Great Hall, and have been sponsored in perpetuity by Nicholas and Matti, who survives him.
Nicholas died on 25 April 2017 at the age of 95.
Nicholas Egon – Painting work, mixed oil pastel technique – is a very beautiful painting.
Code: C634
