(b Glasgow, 15 July 1869; d Glasgow, 4 July 1904). Scottish painter. Associated with the younger members of the Glasgow Boys, she was the most important woman painter in Glasgow at the end of the 19th century. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1887 until 1892. Francis H. Newbery (1853–1946), the headmaster, encouraged her to study in Paris at the Académie Colarossi. Her work was first noted at the 1895 Glasgow Institute Exhibition, and in 1896 she worked with E. A. Hornel and friends at the artists’ colony at Kirkcudbright, Dumfries & Galloway. She painted E. A. Hornel (Broughton House, Dumfries & Galloway) in his studio, against a Japanese kakemono, and she was subsequently influenced by his oil painting technique and use of colour. Favourite subjects were young girls painted en plein air against trees in dappled sunlight, as in A Girl of the ‘Sixties’ (Glasgow, A.G. & Mus.). She painted other works, in watercolour as well as in oil, that show her interest in fashions of the past. In 1899 MacNicol married Dr Alexander Frew (1862–1908), a fellow artist who resumed his medical practice. Her large-scale nude study Vanity (priv. col., see Burkhauser, pp. 230–31) was exhibited at Munich in 1901. Her working life lasted only ten years, as she died in childbirth at the age of 34.

• MacNicol, Bessie
  • Scotland, §III, 3: Painting and graphic arts, c 1850–1918