Frank Dicksee

{"Id":29,"Name":"Frank Dicksee","Biography":"\u003Cstrong\u003EFRANK DICKSEE\u003C/strong\u003E was a member of a noted artistic family, his \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=2672\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003Efather\u003C/a\u003E, brother, and sister Margaret were all well-known painters, and the family lived in the Bloomsbury area of London. He was initially trained by his father, before entering the Royal Academy schools in 1870. Amongst the visiting lecturers who trained him, were the famous senior academicians \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=14\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003ELeighton\u003C/a\u003E [1830-1896] and \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=77\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EMillais\u003C/a\u003E [1829-1896]. Dicksee was a star student, earning many distinctions and medals. Like many other artists of the day his early career was largely spent in book illustration, as well as some stained glass window design. He started exhibiting at the RA in the mid 1870s, and also exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, though his real base was always the Academy. Dicksee made his reputation with \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/image.asp?id=225\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003E\u003Cu\u003EHarmony\u003C/u\u003E\u003C/a\u003E, exhibited at the Academy in 1877, and bought by the Chantry Bequest.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EFrank Dicksee was elected ARA in 1881, and became a full RA ten years later. Many of his pictures were of dramatic historical and legendary scenes. He also was a noted painter of elegant, highly-finished portraits of fashionable women, which of course helped to bring him material success. Many of these portraits are so beautiful, it is really difficult to disapprove of them - happy was the fashionable lady whose portrait was painted by Dicksee! He also painted landscapes. Dicksee lived in St John\u0026#39;s Wood, and remained a bachelor. He was, of course, one of the nineteenth century artists who outlived his time, and was, to his credit, very unhappy with developments in the early twentieth century. Rather surprisingly, Dicksee was elected President of the Royal Academy in 1924, fulfilling the role with panache and tact. Physically he was a tall, good-looking, patrician figure, with a charming easy-going manner. Like his predecessor but one \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=311\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EEdward Poynter\u003C/a\u003E [1836-1919], the traditional orientation of his art gradually isolated him from the artistic mainstream of the day. Dicksee was knighted in 1925 and died in 1928.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Ccenter\u003E\u003CP\u003E\u003CP\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cspan style=\u0022font-size=18px\u0022\u003ESir Frank Dicksee PRA.\u003C/span\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EObituary in the \u003Ci\u003ETimes\u003C/i\u003E Thursday October 18th 1928.\u003C/b\u003E\u003C/center\u003E\u003Cbr\u003ESir Frank Dicksee PRA, whose death is announced on another page, came of an artistic family - his father being \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=2672\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EThomas Francis Dicksee\u003C/a\u003E [1819-1895], who illustrated Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott [1771-1832], and his uncle John Robert Dicksee [1817-1905], animal painter. His professional career was thus made smooth for him in a way which was reflected in his work.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EBorn in London on November 27 1853, he was trained at the Royal Academy Schools, where he won gold and silver medals, and exhibited his first picture in 1876. Coming to maturity at a time when the very word \u0027art\u0027 was synonymous with romantic and sentimental illustration, and the thing so understood more popular than ever before or since, he was by nature and temperament born to enjoy the popularity; and he enjoyed it without a trace of affectation or the least violation of his artistic conscience. If ever the words \u0027born in due season,\u0027 were true of any man they were true of him. He succeeded not because he did what people wanted, but because people wanted what he unconsciously did; and how genuine was the relation between what people demanded and what he and his contemporaries, though none more sympathetically than he supplied, there is Melbury Road to show.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EWe may question if the thing demanded and supplied was the best thing for the welfare of English art, but the evidence - material in the prosperity of artists of the period, and the moral in the conversation of the drawing rooms, faithfully recorded in the pages of \u003Cu\u003EPunch\u003C/u\u003E of a \u0027natural\u0027 working of the famous law, is not to be ignored. For the first time since the 18th century, and for about 20 years art flourished in England. In personal manner Dicksee may be said to have represented a softening of the pre-Raphaelite movement which initiated the period of prosperity, and there can no doubt he owed his popularity partly to the softening. He was without the queerness of the original group and their eldest disciples, a more comfortable painter for the home. In execution he made an artistic virtue of prettiness.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EDicksee was, in short, the chief representative of the older kind of academic artist, whose aim was to express certain common sentiments in a convincing pictorial form. He early achieved success with the picture \u003Cu\u003EHarmony\u003C/u\u003E, which was bought for the Tate Gallery. In that picture we can see all his art, which remained the same to the end, and he had a work of the same character in the Academy of 1921, it was skilfully and thoroughly executed, and its aim was to arouse a certain kind of feeling, which no doubt he himself shared, rather than express any interest in the visible world. This he achieved very skilfully by the use of certain symbols. A young woman plays an organ with extreme sensibility in a sunset light, and a young man with still more sensibility listens to her. All these things which are symbols to conjure with are painted solidly but prosaically; the poetry is in the subject, not the execution. And that is why this kind of art looks old-fashioned now; for only poetry in execution keeps art fresh.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EBut Dicksee having found his way continued in it; he was not, like so many artists of the same kind, content to presume on the success, and to paint carelessly where once he had painted carefully. He always did his best to the end; and thus he was able once or twice to do skilful nudes, such as \u003Cu\u003EGirls Bathing\u003C/u\u003E, which because of its skill, and without sentiment, is less old-fashioned than his more popular pictures. He was a most conscientious portrait painter. In later years he became less popular than worse painters who parodied a more fashionable kind of art, who deserve sharp criticism and much more, for the kind of art he practices he did at least need skill and could not pretend that mere incompetence was dashing.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003ESimilar in feeling and character to \u003Cu\u003EHarmony\u003C/u\u003E, though none of them so completely unified in expression were \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/image.asp?id=223\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003E\u003Cu\u003ERomeo and Juliet\u003C/u\u003E\u003C/a\u003E, and \u003Cu\u003EThe Passing of Arthur\u003C/u\u003E, \u003Cu\u003EThe Redemption of Tannhauser\u003C/u\u003E, \u003Cu\u003EThe Symbol\u003C/u\u003E, \u003Cu\u003EThe Love Story\u003C/u\u003E, and \u003Cu\u003EThe Funeral of a Viking\u003C/u\u003E. A comparatively recent work \u003Cu\u003EThe Light Incarnate\u003C/u\u003E, representing the Madonna and child exhibited in the Academy of 1922 was reproduced in colours, and there can be no doubt that it gave to hundreds of people a sincerely religious emotion.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E In landscape Dicksee\u0026#39;s work, though generally less appreciated must not be forgotten; in tenderness of feeling it recalled the work of the late \u003Ca href=\u0022http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/smythe_lionel_percy.html\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EMr Lionel Smythe RA\u003C/a\u003E [1840-1918]. In the Academy of 1925 there was a very good example of Dicksee\u0026#39;s work in figure and landscape combined entitled \u003Cu\u003EDaughters of Eve\u003C/u\u003E, representing a woman and a little girl under the boughs of an apple tree. Granting the gentleness of the theme and sentiment, it could hardly have been bettered, being perfectly consistent throughout; and in the same year the portraits of \u003Cu\u003EKathleen Bowne, the daughter of Mrs Carpenter Gelshenett\u003C/u\u003E, and \u003Cu\u003EMrs F.M. Hartung\u003C/u\u003E, the artist showed that he had not lost his power of graceful compliment to both youth and maturity, while in \u003Cu\u003EItlaian Coast from La Mortola\u003C/u\u003E, he produced an altogether charming little landscape. Of late years he painted chiefly portraits of women; \u003Cu\u003EA Woman in White\u003C/u\u003E, in the Academy this year was especially notable.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EDicksee was elected ARA in 1881, and RA ten years later, and in December 1924, he succeeded Sir Aston Webb [1849-1930], who retired under the new age limit, as President, receiving the honour of a knighthood at the New Year, and being created KCVO in 1927. He was himself due to retire under the age limit in November. Obviously a stronger artist might have been elected, but taking into consideration all the requirements of the office - personality, manners, tact, general culture, and popularity as a man - there was no doubt that the choice was a wise one, and many of those who roundly condemned his art warmly approved it.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EAfter his election as President Dicksee in various speeches denounced certain morbid and unwholesome tendencies in modern art, which he attributed partly to a reaction against mere prettiness, partly to the heresy that hard work was not needed for the production of anything of permanent value. Less than a month ago, in opening the Guildford Exhibition, he deplored what he called the cult of ugliness, and said that art should be retained on sound and wholesome lines in two ways, by knowledge and by the exercise of the feeling of sincerity. The determined stand for what he saw as sanity in art was made the keynote of the occasion when in 1926, he was nominated by the new Chancellor of Oxford University, the late Lord Cave, for the honorary degree of DCL. \u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EAt all the Academy banquets over which he presided Dicksee was most successful in maintaining the tradition of urbane and polished oratory. At the first banquet after his election he showed, in his references to the late \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=187\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EMr John Sargent RA\u003C/a\u003E [1856-1925], the breadth of sympathy which is far more important in any holder of his office than either depth of imagination or force of execution. To say that in person he summed up the artist heroes of 100 novels is to disparage neither his looks nor the craving indicated. It is a tribute to the elevating power of art itself that simple minds should demand the ideal artist. Dicksee has been spoken of as almost a \u0027double,\u0027 of George du Maurier [1834-1896], and in that writer\u0027s \u003Cu\u003ETrilby\u003C/u\u003E there is a curious instance following a well-known psychological tendency of the unconscious demand in a mind above the average. If memory can be trusted Dicksee himself does not appear in \u003Cu\u003ETrilby\u003C/u\u003E among the originals including \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=652\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EWhistler\u003C/a\u003E [1834-1903] and \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=311\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EPoynter\u003C/a\u003E [1836-1919], from whom the characters were drawn; but somebody like him, that is to say like du Maurier himself, is felt to be the typical artist the Platonic original from whom all the characters depart by idiosyncrasy.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Ccenter\u003E\u003CP\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cspan style=\u0022font-size:18px\u0022\u003EMy Comments.\u003C/span\u003E\u003C/center\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EThere is a real duality running right through this obituary. The writer compliments Dicksee, but bemoans the obsolete nature of his art. The main points which I feel emerge I set out below. \u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EDicksee did not deteriorate with age, lucky man. His death was sudden, and he remained vital and energetic to the end of his life.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EThe comment about Melbury Road refers to Dicksee\u0026#39;s large house in that prosperous area much favoured by successful artists in the late 19th century. \u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EUntil the late 1890s Dicksee was an artist perfectly in tune with his times. In paragraph three the obituarist starts to express reservations about the old-fashioned nature of Dicksee\u0026#39;s art. In the world of \u003Ca href=\u0022http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/sickert_walter_richard.html\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003ESickert\u003C/a\u003E [1860-1942] and \u003Ca href=\u0022http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/john_augustus.html\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EAugustus John\u003C/a\u003E [1878-1961], old fashioned it certainly was. It may be worth asking if any of the more modern artists produced anything showing the skill, and approaching the beauty, of Dicksee\u0026#39;s pictures. The writer is, however, forced to admit that the painter continued to work totally conscientiously.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EDicksee succeeded Sir Aston Webb as PRA, who had retired due to the new maximum age limit, which was doubtlessly brought into effect to prevent a repetition of the prolonged term served by the wonderfully obstinate Poynter. The obituary writer feels that a stronger artist could obviously have been appointed, but justifies Dicksee\u0026#39;s term as PRA by saying it was socially successful. As to who the \u0026#39;stronger artist,\u0026#39; may have been, he does not enlighten us. Perhaps Dicksee was a great President of the Royal Academy?\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cu\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ESource:\u003C/strong\u003E\u003C/u\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cli type=\u0022square\u0022\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http://www.victorianartinbritain.co.uk/\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EVictorian Art in Britan\u003C/a\u003E.\u003C/li\u003E\u003Cp\u003E","Awards":null,"HasAlbums":false,"HasPortraits":true,"HasRelationships":true,"HasArticles":true,"HasDepictedPlaces":true,"HasLetters":true,"HasLibraryItems":true,"HasProducts":true,"HasSignatures":false,"HasVideos":false,"HasMapLocations":true,"TotalArtworks":110}