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FRANK DICKSEE
1853-1928
Simon Toll graduated in 1997 from Warwick University where he studied Art History. His book Herbert Draper 1863-1920 A Life Study was published by the ACC in 2003. He is now Head of Victorian Pictures and Director at Sotheby’s in London, where he has worked for the last 14 years.
His Art and Life
Other books on related subjects published by ACC Art Books include:
WILLIAM BOUGUEREAU HIS LIFE AND WORKS Damien Bartoli with Frederick C. Ross
SIMON TOLL
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ISBN: 978-1-85149-831-4
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FRANK DICKSEE 1853-1928 His Art and Life SIMON TOLL
Frank Dicksee was born at a time when the first wave of Pre-Raphaelitism was beginning to make its presence felt in Britain and he inherited the romantic spirit of the movement that had been founded only a stone’s throw from his childhood home. After early success with Harmony, his painting of unrequited love, he rose to be one of the most popular artists of the late 19th-century, painting in a sumptuous and dramatic style. Dicksee’s family was a veritable dynasty of artists but it is Frank who is best known and loved today for his Pre-Raphaelite-inspired subjects. He enrolled in the Royal Academy in 1870 and quickly achieved success; he was elected to the Academy in 1891 and became President of the Royal Academy in 1924. During 15 years of research, the author has located most of Dicksee’s paintings and has written a full history of his life and works. He includes a catalogue raisonnée and illustrates almost 300 pictures, many of which are previously unpublished.
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Contents Introduction by Frederick C. Ross MA, 6 Prelude – The Genealogy of the Cox-Dicksee Family, 10 Chapter 1 – Childhood at Fitzroy Square 1853-1870, 16 Chapter 2 – Student Years: The Royal Academy Schools 1870-1876, 22 Chapter 3 – Taking London by Storm 1877-1880, 36 Chapter 4 – Associate of the Royal Academy 1881-1883, 48 Chapter 5 – The Last Parting 1884-1886, 58 Chapter 6 – The Sudden Making of a Famous Name 1887-1890, 72 Chapter 7 – Membership of the Royal Academy 1891-1895, 84 Chapter 8 – Love, Death and Beauty 1895-1897, 98 Chapter 9 – A Move to St Johns Wood 1898-1902, 112 Chapter 10 – In Pursuit of the Ideal 1902-1905, 126 Chapter 11 – Portraits of Society 1906-1909, 140 Chapter 12 – The Calm Before The Storm 1910-1914, 150 Chapter 13 – The War Years 1914-1918, 166 Chapter 14 – Peace Regained 1918-1923, 176 Chapter 15 – Presidency of the Royal Academy 1924-1928, 198 Chapter 16 – The Final Chapter 1928 and after, 212 Catalogue Raisonné, 217 Endnotes, 243 General Index, 245 Art Index, 252 Portrait Index, 254 Acknowledgements, 256
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Introduction by Frederick C. Ross MA
potential. They helped disseminate the growing view rank Dicksee is one of a handful of artists over the that every individual was valuable, that all people are centuries, whose work has the power to move one born with equal inalienable rights; especially the rights to tears, or grab your consciousness with a poignant or to life, liberty, the quest for happiness, freedom of impassioned subject and rivet you in the moment with speech and association, and equality before the law. an overwhelming sense of beauty and excitement. A The writers from that era, such as Charles Dickens, true lover of life at the core, he knew instinctively how Alfred Lord Tennyson and John Keats, have been to connect to the most powerful emotions that appeal widely praised and celebrated, while the Academic to our shared humanity. Highly influenced by the Preartists from the same period, communicating similar Raphaelite and Aesthetic artists like Frederic Lord concepts and values ‌in Leighton, John Everett Millais stark contrast‌ have been and his own father Thomas mercilessly ridiculed and Francis Dicksee, he sadly was slandered throughout the one of the last living practwentieth century. Working titioners of the content-based Frank Dicksee can be best understood by together, their generation belief system of his era. His the times in which he lived and by the played a direct role in meticulous personal ethics Victorian sensibilities of the period during helping to free the slaves, in matched his highly energized which his life and his art evolved. bringing into awareness the subjects with talent built on a damage the industrial age life-time of disciplined dewas doing to the environvotion to his skills at drawing. ment, in bringing public He, like his colleagues and outrage to child labor and forebears, understood drawing unsafe working conditions and implementing the as the indispensable framework underlying all great process that would lead to equal rights for women. painting. Their work laid the foundation for breaking up The truth about the fine art of the nineteenth monopolies, protecting and assuring minority rights century is that it was a time of explosive artistic activity along with a nearly endless list of societal improveunrivaled in all prior history.1 Thousands of properly ments. The nineteenth century was the start of the trained artists pouring out of the great academies and evolution that transformed society into the modern era. master ateliers throughout the western world It was a society emerging from repression and developed a myriad of new techniques and explored oppression. Their developing self-awareness led to countless new subjects, styles and perspectives that had implementing all the forms of freedom we now take for never been accomplished before. These new works granted; and history rarely gives the artists any of the covered nearly every aspect of human activity. They credit. The writers of that time who described this were the product of the expansion of freedom and period are today widely celebrated. The visual artists democracy with a profound respect for life, for were addressing the same matters as the writers, and humanity and for individual human beings, including for this incalculably supreme accomplishment their their minds, their souls and their boundless creative
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Associate of the Royal Academy 1881-1883
‘In friendly contention the old men laughed at each lucky hit, or unsuccessful manoeuvre’, illustration for Evangeline, FD.1878.5.G.
‘Then uprose their commander, and spoke from the steps of the altar, holding aloft in his hands, with its seals, the royal commission’, illustration for Evangeline, FD.1878.5.J.
‘Over her head the stars, the thoughts of God in the heavens’, illustration for Evangeline, FD.1878.5.
‘Thus many years she lived as a sister of mercy; frequenting lonely and wretched roofs in the crowded lanes of the city’, illustration for Evangeline, FD.1878.5.U.
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Associate of the Royal Academy 1881-1883
“Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace!”, illustration for Romeo and Juliet, FD.1884.4.L.
“Farewell, farewell! One kiss and i’ll descend”, illustration for Romeo and Juliet, FD.1884.4.A.
“Ay, those attires are best, - but gentle nurse, I pray thee, leave me to myself to-night.”, illustration for Romeo and Juliet, FD.1884.4.I.
“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?” “Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.”, illustration for Romeo and Juliet, FD.1884.4.D.
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The Sudden Making of a Splendid Name 1887-1890 reproduced by Sampson Low & Company and printed as a supplement to the Christmas edition of The Graphic on 20 January 1888. The series was very popular and Queen Victoria was so impressed by the paintings that she invited the managing director of The Graphic, William Luson Thomas, to Osborne House so she might inspect the pictures herself. The paintings were mainly half-length depictions in the ‘Keepsake’ tradition. The Art Journal of 1889, felt that the painters had compromised substance for style ‘… the result is merely a dressing up in a new garb of the most attractive model obtainable at the moment’.5 The same criticism could be made of the contemporary Cynthia, a melancholic depiction of Mary Eastlake as the Roman MoonGoddess seen in profile against an evening sky. Cynthia, Sylvia and Beatrice were not exhibited, but in 1887 Dicksee sent a small grisaille to the Royal Academy to accompany Hesperia. Othello had been bought by John Aird and despite its small size is among Dicksee’s most dramatic compositions. It depicts Othello interrupting the intoxicated fight between Cassio and Iago in which Montano is injured within the garrison at the citadel at Cynthia, FD.1887.3. From a contemporary print. ©Maas Gallery
Sylvia, FD.1887.2. Private Collection / ©Sotheby’s
Beatrice, FD.1887.4. Private Collection / ©Sotheby’s
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The Sudden Making of a Splendid Name 1887-1890
“What is the matter there?”, illustration for Othello, FD.1891.4.B.
“How do you, madam? How do you, my good lady?” “Faith half asleep”, illustration for Othello, FD.1891.4.A.
Left. “Yet I’ll not shed her blood; nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow”, illustration for Othello, FD.1891.4.K.
although he painted many more beautiful and dramatic paintings, few matched the Othello illustrations’ inventive and dramatic force. In November 1887, Dicksee was almost killed when he gallantly came to the aid of a terrified lady driver of a Brougham whose horses had been spooked. Dicksee bravely caught the reigns of the horses as they galloped past and although he brought them to a stand-still, he was badly kicked by their hooves and crushed between the carriage and a post in the road. He returned home in a hired cab and after undressing found that his leg was badly injured from the knee to the ankle and his hand was immobile. Minnie called for a doctor who dressed the wounds and Dicksee was given strict instructions to stay in bed for a fortnight. When the
Cyprus from Act II, Scene III of the play. This watercolour was made for Cassell who, after the success of Dicksee’s Romeo and Juliet illustrations for the International Shakespeare series, commissioned him to produce another twelve gouaches for the Othello edition, which was finally published in 1890. Two of these illustrations were completed by 1887 and exhibited at the Jubilee Exhibition, one of which was the watercolour owned by Aird. The other depicted Othello approaching Desdemona sleeping in her bedchamber, whispering the words; ‘Yet I’ll not shed her blood; Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow’. The illustration is effectively ominous and forceful and Dicksee’s use of grisaille was masterly, the shadows emphasising the sense of threat and drama. This was Dicksee’s last great illustrative project, 76
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Membership of the Royal Academy 1891-1895
The Magic Crystal, FD.1894.1. Lady Lever Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool / ©Bridgeman Images
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Paolo and Francesca, FD.1894.2. Private Collection / ©Christie’s 2008
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In Pursuit of the Ideal 1902-1905
The Lady Hillingdon, FD.1905.1. Private Collection / ©Sotheby’s
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C
HAPTER
11
Portraits of Society 1906-1909
fully monumental painting in which the silk, blooms of magnolia and the Duchess are equally luscious. There had been a longstanding rule at the Academy that full-length portraits could not be hung ‘on the line’ following a dispute between Thomas Gainsborough and the hanging committee. However, a critic for The Times remarked that no less than five examples were hung on the line in 1905, including Dicksee’s large portrait of the Duchess. The same critic felt that Dicksee had ‘revelled in the draperies and background but had hardly risen to the height of the task when he came to paint
he success of Dicksee’s portrait of Lady Hillingdon was matched in 1905 when he painted a magnificent full-length and life-sized portrait of the first wife of the second Duke of Westminster, ‘Shelagh’ Constance Edwina Grosvenor (née Cornwallis-West 1876-1970). Shelagh had married her childhood sweetheart Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor in February 1901 and lived at Eaton Hall in Cheshire in much style and wealth with a fine collection of art that rivalled that of the Hillingdons. Dicksee captured the grandeur of the Westminsters’ lifestyle in his wonder-
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Photograph of the studio at Greville House, from Art Annual 1905.
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The Calm Before The Storm 1910-1914
Lady Inverclyde, FD.1910.2. ©Glasgow Museum & Art Gallery
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The Calm Before The Storm 1910-1914
Mrs George Pinckard, FD.1910.4. Private Collection / ©Sotheby’s
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Peace Regained 1918-1923
The Light Incarnate, FD.1922.1. From a photograph c.1922. Private Collection
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Peace Regained 1918-1923
Portrait study of Agnes Mallam for The End of the Quest, FD.1921.1.B. Private Collection / ©Sotheby’s
believes will contribute to social advancement.’ 10 Bibby had admired Dicksee’s work for many years and was particularly drawn to the mysticism of The Light Incarnate, which he reproduced in his annual. The picture was popular with those seeking solace from the ravages of the war, including Bibby and his wife Ruth, who had lost two of their sons on the battle-fields of France. For those in mourning, Dicksee’s radiant image of Christ and the Madonna offered some comfort and its popularity led to Queen Mary purchasing a smaller watercolour version of the picture.11 Whilst Dicksee was pleased with this portrayal of Agnes as the epitome of female purity, he was also planning to paint a larger picture. In 1921 Dicksee painted The End of the Quest, with Agnes dressed in
raiment of ruby-hued embroidered silk and her hair gathered in a net of woven gold, as a medieval princess symbolising the idea of maidenhood embodied in European folklore. Like Elaine and the Lady of Shallot, Rapunzel or the sleeping beauty, she has waited virginally for the arrival of a knight on a white charger. This is the moment that Dicksee depicted, as the handsome young crusader bows before the maiden and takes her hands in his and swears his devotion to her. He has ridden through the mountainous valley guarded by cliff-top castles to end his quest at her golden throne. Her loggia resembles a shrine to beauty, filled with the scents of oranges and rose blooms and lit by a radiant evening glow. The knight and his lady are not specific characters from literature. She is a 186
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The Final Chapter 1928 and after
Mrs. William Harrison, FD.1928.1. Private Collection / ©Norman Taylor Photography
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The Final Chapter 1928 and after
Mr. William Harrison, FD.1928.2.
Portrait of a lady, FD.1928.4. ©Wooley & Wallis
Private Collection / © Norman Taylor
Photography
illness since the death of his beloved wife in 1924. Dicksee had regularly visited Holiday and his daughter Winifred during his illness and had given the old man great comfort in his last months. Winifred wrote of her problems disposing of the sculpture after her father’s death: ‘In my difficulty I sought Sir Frank, and the difficulty vanished; in a few days she was transferred to one of his studios. Nor was this all. My father, following what he considered the entirely right example of the great Greeks, had tinted the statue. This tinting, purely conventional in character, Sir Frank greatly admired; but the statue was in need of a thorough cleaning, which was done under his directions. The sequel is best given in his own words. Writing to me early this year, he said: “When you last saw ‘Sleep’ you must have been disappointed; she was not looking her best. The man who cleaned her did his best, but in the doing removed the colour from some parts of the figure, which troubled him, but I told him I would restore it. Two days ago I was able to go all over it, and she looks really beautiful. I should like you to see her now.” I went and shall never forget his smiling expression of pride and delight as he removed her coverings and turned to look at me. In the midst of his own incessant work, artistic and official, he had indeed found time to “restore” her from head to foot, and as I looked at her I felt that, faithful though the colouring was to the original, he had in some charming and
The portrait of William Harrison is a sober and understated likeness, enriched by the crimson silk drapes and his elegant tailoring. Although he was better known as a painter of women Dicksee’s portraits of men have a dignified strength. In 1927 Dicksee also painted a portrait of Sir William George Perring (1866-1937) M.P. for North Paddington, presented to him by Paddington Conservative Club at the Town Hall in January that year to mark his knighthood. Dicksee posed in his ceremonial robes and medals for a portrait bust in 1927 by Sir William Goscombe John, the plaster cast of which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1928. It is a virile depiction of intelligence but in reality Dicksee had begun to look tired as the responsibilities of his work at the Academy started to take a toll upon his health. Although he chatted in his usual charming and gracious manner at the Royal Academy party of 1928 and none suspected that he was unwell, as he bid farewell to many of the guests it was for the last time. One of Dicksee’s last artistic achievements in 1928 was the restoration of Henry Holiday’s life-sized plaster figure of a recumbent woman entitled Sleep, which had been tinted in the Greek manner in 1881 but over time had lost much of its colour. Holiday had died on Good Friday, 15 April 1927 after suffering a debilitating 214
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Acknowledgements spurred me on to complete it. The kind and generous help of Rupert Maas, Julian Hartnoll, Grant Ford at Sotheby’s, Brandon Lindberg at Christie’s and Veronique Scorer at Bonham’s made it possible to reproduce many of the pictures that they have sold. Ruth Dicksee, Pamela Service, Gillian Service, Hilary Talboys, Bryan Steele and the Maxwell-Clarke family have been of great help in trying to piece together Dicksee’s life. My last words of thanks must go to Amanda Kavanagh who shared all of her research with me, giving me the basis on which to start the book.
cannot individually thank everyone who has helped with this book but there are a few people to whom I must give a few words of thanks. Firstly, I must thank Susannah Hecht and her team at ACC for their forbearance and infinite good sense as well as an eaglesharp eye for detail; in particular, the book’s designer, Steve Farrow, who has made a sterling job of pulling all the strands together and displaying Dicksee at his best. I am very grateful to Fred and Kara Ross for their generosity, which has made the publication possible. My friend Patricia O’Connor was the first person to read a draft of this book and her encouragement
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