Frank dicksee by ACC Art Books

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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

ËxHSLIPBy498314zv;:*:;:!:! £45.00/$95.00

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 He includes a catalogue raisonnée and illustrates almost 300 pictures, many of which are previously unpublished.

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FRANK DICKSEE

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Richard Cox-Dicksee by his son Thomas Francis Dicksee.

Portrait of Margaret Cox-Dicksee by her son Thomas Francis Dicksee.

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RELUDE

The Genealogy of the Cox-Dicksee Family

he early life of a child is influenced by the experiences of their parents and grandparents and before the life of Frank Dicksee can be mapped out, an explanation of his family background is necessary. The story begins in the Thames-side dockyards of London in the first years of the nineteenth century. The Napoleonic wars had created an almost inexhaustible need for young men to work on the British navy warships and there was a severe shortage of willing and able sailors to man the merchant vessels. Badly-paid and dangerous, it was difficult to attract volunteers and the act of impressment or pressganging was reintroduced to allow the navy to force any man between the age of eighteen and fifty-five to enrol. Impressments were often enforced with violence and guile and there were many stories of men being plied with alcohol who awoke to find themselves already aboard boats bound for faraway shores to endure the hardships of strenuous manual labour, the dangers of disease or malnutrition and brutal punishment. Impressment gangs prowled the streets of the poorer parts of London to find suitable men, two of whom were the unfortunate John Cox and his brother Richard. Richard Cox was born on 10 September 1785 and, like his father, he made his living working on the ships trading out of the Pool of London. On 8 December 1806, Richard married Margaret the nineteen-year-old daughter of Robert and Jane Badger, at St. Anne’s Church in the heart of Soho. According to family tradition, Margaret’s mother was a native American squaw who had been brought to Britain when she was married to Robert as part of a peace treaty between her father and the captain of the merchant ship on which Robert served as First Mate. Richard and Margaret’s marriage was initially happy and she was soon pregnant. On 11 September 1807, a day after Richard

Cox’s twenty-second birthday, his son was born and named Richard George. Unfortunately, the happy family life was soon turned upside down. Richard Cox and his brother John’s experience at sea made them attractive candidates for the impressment officers and shortly after the birth of Richard George Cox, his father and uncle were both press-ganged. ‘The men thus pressed were taken from the near grasp of parents or wives, and were often deprived of the hard earnings of years, which remained in the hands of the masters of the merchantman in which they had served, subject to all the chances of honesty or dishonesty, life or death.’ 1 The brothers endured several miserable years of naval service until they were able to escape their captors and make an attempt to return home to their families. On the journey back to London, the brothers risked being caught and imprisoned for desertion and decided to travel under false names. They chose the nickname that had been acquired by Richard from a shortening of his name, Dick C.2 They eventually returned to London under the names Richard and John Dicksee. The Dicksee brothers feared recapture but beneath their house on Swallow Street at the western edge of Soho were a series of tunnels and vaulted storage cellars that served as a suitable hiding place. It was here that they established a clandestine boot-making business in the subterranean rooms. The Dicksee brothers were boot closers, crafting leather uppers, the most profitable part of making shoes. Richard was, according to his son; ‘an excellent workman, steady, sober and industrious, a good father who loved his home and was generally found there and satisfied with his position with no apparent hope or desire of improving it.’ 3 They only had to endure a couple of years living this way, as in 1815 an amnesty on naval deserters was granted. Margaret had become independent and resilient, 11

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Childhood at Fitzroy Square. 1853-1870

Begging his Bread by Thomas Francis Dicksee. Private Collection / ©Christie’s 1995

extinguish their flambeaux.’ 3 The artist William Dyce had converted the coach-house at the rear into a studio during his residence in the mid-1850s, whilst the remaining part of the house was little altered from Adam’s original designs built in the early 1790s as the first phase of his grand scheme for the square. The two large reception rooms on the ground floor were decorated with white marble fireplaces and ornate plaster cornices and flanked the entrance hall at the front and the stairway at the rear, which swept up to larger reception rooms on the first floor. The house boasted one of the finest Adam staircases in the square, with stone steps and mahogany hand-rails over an

had set his sights on a new residence for his family and his wife’s unmarried sisters Emily and Alice. The former home of the portrait painter James Sant had become vacant at number 2 Fitzroy Square, part of the east side of Robert Adam’s beautiful Portland stone terraces, one of the ‘Grand old houses... which at one time were the homes of the elite of London, equipped as they were with splendid oak-panelled halls, imposing staircases and rooms, with Adam mantelpieces and lofty over-doors and ceilings. Attached to the railings outside the hall door were the ironwork posts to which were affixed the oil lamp and the enormous twisted snuffers used in the days of Sedan chairs and their preceding torch-bearers, for the light-carriers to 19

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Childhood at Fitzroy Square. 1853-1870

Engraving from a photograph of Frank aged 10, 1863.

Croquet Players (portraits of the Dicksee family), FD.1866.1.

Thomas’s closest friend was the genre painter William Lee who had been a neighbour at 16 Howland Street. The Dicksees were regular guests at the artistic soirees given by Lee’s beautiful young wife Harriet, whose success as an opera singer brought her into contact with famous thespians and singers. The actors Henry Irving and Johnston Forbes-Robertson and composer Arthur Sullivan were regular visitors to their house and Ellen Terry was a friend of Mrs Lee. Thomas painted Harriet’s portrait as a gift for William as a mark of his affection and Eliza and Harriet were close confidantes. The Lees encouraged the Dicksees to host their own salon of literary, artistic and musical men and women. These were held regularly through the summers on Sunday evenings. Lee’s pretty daughter Jessie Harriet (1855-1890) was a lifelong companion of the Dicksee children, particularly Minnie. Minnie was schooled in a street off Fitzroy Square and later at the Royal Female School of Art on Queen Square. Frank’s formative education was spent at the Store Street Grammar School, kept by the botanist Reverend George Henslow. Victorian schools were places of regiment and chore where pupils sat in silence and learned by rote, suffering harsh penalties if they were disobedient. Although Henslow was only in his early thirties, he was a large and intimidating man and an autocratic Headmaster. Young Frank bore his school years quietly and uneventfully, the only moment of

ornate design of wrought-iron banisters in the form of classical lyres. The Dicksees remained in these elegant surroundings for the next twenty-five years. In 1874, John Robert and Mary Ann moved to 6 Fitzroy Square with their five children4 to live alongside their brother and sisters; fifteen members of their combined family resided in their neighbouring homes.

Photograph of Eliza Dicksee, 1840s.

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The Last Parting 1884-1886

Spring, FD.1884.2. Private Collection / ©Sotheby’s

“passionate Brompton” it will seem excellent for veracity and completeness.’ 2 The critic W. E. Henley was enthusiastic in his praise of Dicksee’s illustrations: ‘… his achievement, quick with invention and sincerity, and touched with genuine passion, is good and complete enough to be presently remarkable and have real permanent value.’ 3

illustrations) have real permanent value.’ The writer admired the freshness of Dicksee’s approach and particularly noted his choice of models: ‘His types are modern; they have the lean faces, the long chins, the melancholy grace, the aspect of intensity, which are component parts of a certain ideal of to-day… To the Juliets and Romeos of 61

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The Last Parting 1884-1886

Portrait study of Agatha Thornycroft, FD.1884.4. ©Victoria & Albert Museum

Romeo and Juliet illustrates the lines spoken on the balcony by Romeo: ‘Farewell, farewell, one kiss and I’ll descend’. The view of Verona was absent from the illustration upon which Dicksee based the painting but he used sketches that he had made during his visit to Verona with Gow to construct the view from the window. The carved marble column of the balcony was also based upon a sketch made in Italy. The white lilies of virginity beside Juliet, emphasise the purity of the maiden, whilst the twisting passionflowers embracing the marble pillars of the balcony, have obvious sexual and romantic allusions. The same flowers and a similar balcony can be found in Millais’ Isabella, which may have influenced Dicksee’s picture. The passionflowers are absent from Dicksee’s earlier illustration, as are details of Romeo’s costume, which were added for modesty. Dicksee made further studies of the figure of Juliet for the painting, making her body more sensuously draped to suggest the curves of the bare limbs beneath her gown. Dibdin felt that Dicksee’s Juliet was more successful than that painted by Ford Madox Brown in 1867, who ‘offends the imagination… Mr Dicksee’s Juliet satisfies the eye as entirely as did Adelaide Neilson and Mary Anderson’.4 Dicksee’s picture is closer

Study for Romeo and Juliet, FD.1884.1.B. ©Victoria & Albert museum.

in effect to the later Venetian-inspired work of Rossetti, in which glorious extravagant detail and luscious fabrics and decoration emphasise the heady sensuality of erotic love. Rossetti had died in 1882 and in 1883, the year Romeo and Juliet was exhibited, the Royal Academy had also held Rossetti’s memorial exhibition. The French engraver Charles Albert Waltner, who had engraved Harmony a few years earlier, produced a beautiful engraving of Romeo and Juliet, which was almost as highly regarded as its predecessor and helped the picture to retain its enduring popularity. The prominence of the painting was also helped by Henry Irving and Ellen Terry’s performances as Romeo and Juliet at the Lyceum Theatre, which although not critically acclaimed, were immensely popular. The production opened on 8 March 1882 and it is likely that Dicksee saw a performance before his trip to Italy later that year. Although the painting 62

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Within the Shadow of the Church, FD.1888.1. From a contemporary print.

Sketch for Within the Shadow of the Church, FD.1888.1.A.

©Whitworth,

University of Manchester

of Haworth’s extensive collection of Egyptian antiquities was given to various museums, particularly the Manchester Museum. Mrs Marianne Haworth had wanted Within the Shadow of the Church to be given to a museum in Manchester when she died but this wish was unfulfilled and it is now lost, known only from an engraving and the watercolour sketches. Like The Symbol and Harmony, Within the Shadow of the Church depicts the conflicts of duty and passion. The subject may have had a personal resonance with the artist who was already thirty-five and unmarried. In 1886, his younger brother Sidney had married Faith Ethel Burroughs at St. Anne’s church in Soho. She was the second daughter of a famous maker of billiardtables, James Samuel Burroughs, who had been a neighbour at Fitzroy Square. After their marriage, Sidney and Faith moved to Rugby in Warwickshire, where Sidney ran a highly successful building and contactors company.

attached; ‘But I must also feel it as a man: I cannot but remember such things were, that were most precious to me.’ The Art Journal described the picture: ‘The young wife has passed by the door of the church leading her little child, as a former lover, now a priest, enters the porch. The priest looks back regretfully at the young mother who is leaving the shadow of the building and is now walking in the sunshine where butterflies flicker. The idea has been painted before, perhaps, but Mr. Dicksee’s interpretation of it is entirely his own.’ 14 The St James Gazette was less complimentary, describing it as: ‘…genre masquerading as something more ambitious. The real subject is sunlight and costume, both of which demand a finer eye for colour and for the subtleties of texture than Mr. Dicksee happens to possess. Moreover, in all he does there is a veneer of almost stagy convention, which may possibly be explained by his forming too rigid a notion of what he means to do before he begins to paint.’ 15 Within the Shadow of the Church was bought for £1,200 by the yarn agent Jesse Haworth who lived in Cheshire. During his lifetime and after his death, much 71

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Hesperia, FD.1887.1. Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, Lancashire, UK / Â©Bridgeman Images

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CHAPTER 7

Membership of the Royal Academy 1891-1895

he Redemption of Tannhäuser was large, melodramatic and imposing, but for many visitors to the Academy’s Summer Exhibition it was incomprehensible. For his next exhibit, Dicksee presented what he hoped would be a more decipherable narrative and a subject that was both modern and challenging, a return to the social melodramas that he had explored in Memories. The Crisis depicts a weary father sitting in silent vigil watching for any change in the condition of his bed-ridden daughter. The physician has administered a dose of medicine and departed and the light is failing in sympathy with the patient’s ebbing health. The model that posed for the figure of the sick girl was propped upright against large cushions and Dicksee made a sensitive and informal portrait study of her head in profile leaning back against the cushion. The moment shortly before or after death was one that preoccupied Dicksee for many years. In 1872, he painted an anxious mother at her child’s bedside in the Langham sketch, Watching and the contemporary Going Home showed a child at the deathbed of an aged relative. Two decades later, the stimulus to paint The Crisis was probably the influenza pandemic that had broken out in Russia in 1889 and quickly spread around the world to reach London by the January of 1890. Russian ’Flu claimed the lives of a million people across the world and was indiscriminate. In the spring of 1891, Dicksee was confined to his bed for several weeks with a severe fever, aching limbs and nausea; by May it was reported in the newspapers that he was recovering from the symptoms of the ’flu. The Crisis would have been almost complete but as Dicksee lay in his sick-bed he must have reflected on the poignancy of his picture to the relatives of all those who had not survived the ravages of the influenza. Whilst The Redemption of Tannhäuser emphasised the melodrama of death, The Crisis had a claustrophobic

Portrait study of a girl, FD.1891.2. Private Collection / ©Christie’s 2005

The Doctor by Luke Fildes.

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The Crisis, FD.1891.1. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia / ©Bridgeman Images

private buyer, he was pleased that the picture was bought for a public collection. The purchase of The Crisis was probably encouraged by the commission of another picture in 1891 by a wealthy industrialist and art collector William Knox D’Arcy, who had emigrated with his family to Australia in his youth. Recently returned to England, D’Arcy asked Dicksee to paint a large picture to hang above the fire-place in the dining room of his newly-purchased country mansion, Stanmore Hall. The scale of The Mountain of the Winds made it ‘the most ambitious this artist has ever painted’,3 a swirling powerful allegory depicting the four Gods and Goddesses of the Wind described by Ovid in Metamorphoses and by Virgil in the first book of the Aeneid. The subject was described by Dicksee as: “… a mountain in Arcadia, in a vast plain, where the four winds prepare to take breath for their courses on the earth, whence force shall resound on force, and softness be answered by softness.” 4 Notus, the Goddess of the South Wind reclines on the high peak of the mountain, beneath the arch of a rainbow heralding the arrival of the

intensity and it must have been a frightening image for a world recovering from such a pandemic. The picture was well received at the Royal Academy, The Art Journal remarking: ‘The drawing of both heads is masterly, and such few English artists could equal; the conception, too, shows the painter more in touch with humanity than he has previously been, though there is about it a deliberation which robs the scene of some of its spontaneity, and therefore of a part of its effect.’ 1 Unfortunately, The Crisis was overshadowed by Sir Luke Fildes’ The Doctor, which was shown at the same Academy exhibition. The two artists had painted very similar pictures without either having had any knowledge of the other. The Crisis was chosen by another painter with a taste for morbid realism, Hubert von Herkomer, to be purchased by the Trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia. Herkomer greatly admired the picture: ‘This represents strong emotional art, and the subject is treated without theatrical subterfuge.’ 2 Dicksee was paid £1,260 for the picture and although he could have asked a higher price from a 85

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HAPTER

The War Years 1914-1918

heard beyond the courtyard as a large crowd neared Piccadilly Circus. It was a warm night and the windows of the meeting room were open and it was the sound of shouting that alerted the Council to the crowds in the street. The meeting was brought to a swift close and when the doors were opened, Poynter and the others were told of the momentous evening that had unfolded. Everyone around the table was certain that life was about to change forever, and the tension that

he Edwardian years were times of conspicuous gaiety when class distinctions had lessened. ‘The period between 1907 and 1914 witnessed the last wild orgy in which the dying Victorian world indulged before its downfall. When the old Queen passed away and Edward ruled in her place, even the humblest of us could feel that a too rigid discipline had been relaxed.’ 1 King Edward socialised with industrialists and self-made men, who had previously been snubbed by royalty. The ballroom at the Ritz hotel was hired night after night by ‘the wives of armament makers, soap boilers, ship owners and other commercial magnates with marriageable daughters’ 2 Living the high-life was no longer the reserve of the aristocratic classes. It was an age of champagne parties, tennis on the lawn, of tiaras and starched shirts, in which decadence and frivolity reached new heights. Art reflected the freedom of the young men and women who were set to inherit the fortunes made by their parents and grandparents who had struggled through an age of austerity and self-restraint. Victorian morality was still the doctrine of society, but beneath the surface those with a taste for hedonism were indulging themselves, free from the constraints of corsets and commandments. The party was coming to a close, however, and in 1914 the champagne lost its effervescence and the glitter of the diamonds dulled as war tore families and the country apart. Dicksee was among the select gathering of the Royal Academy Council that sat in the suite of rooms overlooking the courtyard of Burlington House late on the evening of 3 August in the fateful summer of 1914. Poynter was presiding over a meeting of the Academy Council and those in attendance included Seymour Lucas, Sargent, Aston Webb and Ouless. On the balcony of Buckingham Palace, The King had announced at 8pm that war had been declared upon Germany. The news did not reach Burlington House until close to midnight, when a distant commotion was

Photograph of Dicksee with his portrait of his niece Ethel, 1915. Private Collection

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The War Years 1914-1918 had been building over recent months had now reached a climax. Britain was at war. In 1914 Dicksee was commissioned by the Daily Telegraph to paint an illustration to be printed in colour in King Albert’s Book presented to the King of the Belgians as a tribute to his allegiance with Britain. The contributors included Conan Doyle, Lloyd George, Marconi, Kipling and Rider Haggard; whilst the illustrations were provided by artists as diverse as Claude Monet, Walter Crane, Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. Dicksee’s powerful watercolour Resurgam (I will rise again) depicts the heroic masculinity that Dicksee had painted in The Funeral of a Viking, Chivalry and The Two Crowns. A heroic knight in shining armour and laurelwreath kneels within a wasteland surrounded by flames from which he is protecting the tricolour flag. He holds aloft the hilt of his sword to form the symbol of Christianity to ward off the nightmarish female figure of Bellona, the Roman Goddess of War who sweeps Mrs James Simpson, FD.1915.3. From Royal Academy Pictures 1915. around him with a flaming torch. His mortal body has been engulfed by flames but his several years finally completing it in 1916. brave spirit has risen again like Christ whose In 1915 Dicksee also painted a beautiful portrait of resurrection brought hope to humanity. the Hon. Mrs Georgina Violet Simpson (née Hamilton, The fashion for such symbolist pictures had been 1889-1977), the youngest of the seven daughters of the reawakened by the outbreak of war as artists sought to late 9th Lord of Belhaven and Stenton. In 1913 she had capture the heroism, patriotism and horror of the war. married her cousin Lieutenant James Cowie Simpson, Images of the armoured St. George and other medieval a Fellow of the Geological Society, but sadly their knights became popular with the designers of marriage was cut short when he died in action in propaganda posters and eventually with the sculptors December 1916 .3 Dicksee dressed Georgina in an of the war memorials. Clad in silver armour and with a elegant dark silk dress and with a long mink stole sword held aloft, the chivalric knight became the draped over her white shoulders. He posed her in the symbol of Britain’s military might and righteous same manner that he had painted Lady Inverclyde a few resolve. Resurgam inspired Dicksee to design a large oil years earlier, one hand idly twisting a necklace of pearls. painting of a similar subject, which he worked on for 168

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A Sussex Weald, FD.1918.4. Painters Hall, London / ©Christie’s 2006

Sherwood Foresters regiment, the only son of Nora and Lawrence Robert Dicksee (the artist’s cousin), tragically died when he fell into a deep quarry in Sunderland during military training on 9 May 1916 aged only eighteen and less than a month after enrolling. Lieutenant Reginald Frank Dicksee, son of Florence and Frank Herbert Dicksee also died in the same regiment at Dunkerque on 8 October 1918, aged nineteen. Like so many families, the Dicksees lost almost an entire generation of their sons who fought for the peace depicted in Dicksee’s watercolour A Sussex Weald. The portrait of Maurice was painted from photographs like that of the Canadian soldier Lieutenant Leslie Boulter Saunders (1896-1918) of the Royal Field Artillery, son of Bernard and Harriet Saunders. Saunders died in action in 1918 and his portrait was exhibited posthumously at the Academy in 1919. Exhibited alongside this was another male portrait, that of Lord Charnwood, which had been painted after Charnwood successfully bid for a lot in an auction held at Christie’s in April 1918. The sale had been organised to raise funds for the Red Cross and whilst many artists had donated paintings, others including Dicksee sent blank canvases with the promise that they would paint

annual fee of a shilling and sixpence could read the magazine for two days before passing it to the next member of the group. Maurice’s cousins Phyllis, Cedric, Amy, Harold and his sister Dorothy all contributed to the highly organised venture. In 1911, the eleven-yearold Maurice contributed a poem The Charge of the Grenadiers with the poignantly prophetic opening lines ‘Fix bayonets – was the cry. We’ll win the fight or die!!’ As Violet Dickinson wrote in one of the later volumes of the Invalids Magazine Album, ‘...the most terrible war of all times has swooped down upon us...’ Painting the portrait can have given Dicksee no pleasure as sadly the handsome young Maurice Dicksee was one of the casualties of this terrible war and he would never see the portrait painted by his uncle. Lieutenant Dicksee of the Middlesex Regiment was sent to the Front on 15 October 1917 where he was transferred to the Royal Fusiliers. He fought under horrific conditions for more than a year and was killed in action as the war came to a close; he died on 14 September, two months before the war’s end and a day after his twenty-first birthday. Sadly Maurice was not the only loss in the Dicksee family. His cousin and school-friend Second Lieutenant ‘Roy’ Lawrence Rowland Arthur Dicksee of the 3rd Battalion of the 178

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Peace Regained 1918-1923 the portraits of the successful bidders. Charnwood paid one of the highest prices of £367 to secure a pendant to the portrait of his wife in the knowledge that his money was going to a good cause. Portraits of fallen military heroes were filling the Royal Academy exhibitions and Dicksee received several commissions to paint the likeness of men lost in battle as well as those who had returned home, including that of Lieutenant William Rudolph Slayter, D.S.C., R.N. (1896-1971) son of the American doctor John Howard Slayter, painted in 1921. Although not as plentiful as the female portraits, those commissions were lucrative. His most successful portrait of a man is that of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Henry Douglas Charlton Whitmore, C.M.C., D.S.O. (1872-1962), which was presented to the sitter by the Men of the Essex Yeomanry. Whitmore was one of the great heroes of both the Boer War and WWI, during which he commanded the 10th Royal Hussars, until wounded at Ypres. After the war, despite running a large agricultural estate at Orsett in Essex, Whitmore also remained active in the home guard and was made Lord Lieutenant of Essex shortly before World War II. Dicksee ably expressed Whitmore’s stoic strength in this powerful and masculine portrait, which is formal and posed but not artificial. Dicksee painted Whitmore beside a pew in Orsett parish church beneath the flag of the Essex Regiment and with a stained glass window bearing his coat of arms and the motto INCORRUPT A FIDES (Incorruptible Faith). Whitmore was a stickler for high standards and even under the worst conditions on the battlefields of South Africa and northern France he maintained his impeccable appearance. This is shown in Dicksee’s portrait with Whitmore’s spotless khaki cavalry uniform, with its shining gold buttons and polished leather. The portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1919 with an attractive portrait of Clare Maclean Horsley (later Mrs Guy Morton, 1900-1986), daughter of the wealthy timber merchant and art collector Matthew Henry Horsley of Brinkburn in West Hartlepool.2 Dicksee painted Clare in a rose-coloured gown to emphasise her bright auburn hair and the blush of her pale skin. Whitmore’s and Miss Horsley’s portraits contrasted masculine strength, military austerity and authority with soft femininity and decorous languor. Sadly Miss Horsley’s portrait was subsequently cut-down and is now reduced to her head and shoulders. In 1918 Dicksee also painted Mary Helen Charlotte Chetwynd-Talbot (née Hepburne-Scott, 1885-1922), wife of Lieutenant-Colonel Reginald George Chetwynd-

Lt.-Col. F.H.D.C. Whitmore C.M.C., D.S.O., FD.1920.2. ©Regimental Trustees of the Essex Yeomanry

Talbot, as though she had paused momentarily whilst walking in a summer rose-garden. In December 1919, Sir Edward John Poynter resigned from the Presidency of the Royal Academy on grounds of ill health; only seven months later he was dead. On 21 January of the following year a ballot was held to find the new President for the Academy. Dicksee had visited Luke Fildes to ask his opinion on the suitability of John Singer Sargent to be Poynter’s successor, feeling that he would be a very fitting candidate. He asked Fildes to be Sargent’s sponsor and although Fildes was unsure of the suitability of an American, he could not think of a better alternative. He agreed to sign a letter to the Academy suggesting that they consider Sargent for Presidency, but the letter was not sent as doubts arose as to whether Sargent would accept. When the Academy revealed those who had 179

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Mrs Sanford, FD.1923.1. Private Collection / Â©Charles Birchmore photography

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The Hon. Mrs. Harris, FD.1923.3. ÂŠBelmont House

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Mrs F.A.W. Buller, FD.1923.5. From a photograph c.1923. Private Collection

elegantly folded together in a similar way to Mrs Sanford. She was Mary Caroline Buller (née Hammick, 1893-1965), the wife of Rear Admiral Francis Alexander Waddilove Buller. Shortly after the close of the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1923, Dicksee painted a shimmering portrait of Mrs Viva Holbrook (née Woodin, formerly Mrs Frank Everard Dixon 18831952), wife of Commander Norman Douglas Holbrook who had been awarded the first naval Victoria Cross

in Yorkshire. Dicksee hinted at Mrs Angel’s husband’s profession by dressing Henrietta in a beautiful red gown wrought with golden pomegranates and leaning against elaborately embroidered ruby and gold cushions. The art critic for the Jewish Chronicle described the portrait as ‘… remarkable… a veritable essay in the pictorial reproduction of lustrous textures.’ 18 The last of the women painted by Dicksee for the Academy exhibition of 1923 was portrayed sitting in a chair against one of his old Flemish tapestries, her hands 194

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Presidency of the Royal Academy 1924-1928

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HAPTER

The Final Chapter 1928 and after

he art critic for The Times noted at the private view of the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1928 that there was a proliferation of paintings of modern fashion, although he commented that most artists had been ‘intimidated by the eccentric ups and downs of modern skirts’.1 Among the elegant party guests was a relative newcomer to the glamour of London, Gwyneth ‘Anne’ Pershouse (née Humphrey 1893-1979) who had married Major Frank Sydney Pershouse in 1923 and lived in much style near Hyde Park. Mrs Pershouse had come to see Dicksee’s full-length portrait of her in a languid pose swathed in silk and fine lace, bedecked with pearls and exotic orchids seated on a mink cloak. Anne was a beautiful woman and she could be vain. When she had her nose reshaped later in her life, an artist was employed to ‘improve’ her painted visage accordingly. Unfortunately, the artist also changed her diamond bracelet to a less harmonious one of emeralds and unsatisfactorily repainted the background. The date was also removed from the portrait at Anne’s request so that she could pretend to be younger. The alterations are regrettable as the portrait was noted as one of ‘the happiest in arrangement’ 2 and demonstrated Dicksee’s ability to paint a harmony with a difficult colour scheme of ‘dull pink, ivory, gold, and grey-brown’. The Times’ critic described the picture as: ‘a tribute to the popular white satin beauté evening gown, made with a square throat, long side draperies, a big shoulder spray of white flowers and a fine lace scarf which conceals the brevity of the skirt’.3 In 1927 Dicksee also painted a pair of portraits of William Harrison L.L.D. (1886-1979) a paper manufacturer and his wife Margaret Simpson Harrison (1886-1966). The portrait of Margaret Harrison is less ostentatious than that of Mrs Pershouse and depicts a more modest personality. The composition of her portrait is similar to that of Lady Hillingdon’s painted almost three

Mrs. Frank S. Pershouse, 1928 (after repainting), FD.1928.3. Private Collection

decades earlier but her informal floral summer dress and silk sun-hat shows the advances in women’s fashion. Rather than painting Margaret wearing glittering gemstones, he adorned her neck with a simple string of pearl and a watch at her wrist. Through the window can be seen ferns and pale hydrangeas growing in a conservatory, the hue of the flowers harmonising with her dress and her pale complexion. 212

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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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FRANK DICKSEE

1853-1928

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

To see the full catalogue of books published by ACC Art Books, please go to our website:

ISBN: 978-1-85149-831-4

ËxHSLIPBy498314zv;:*:;:!:! £45.00/$95.00

FRANK DICKSEE 1853-1928 His Art and Life SIMON TOLL