England Dicksee Sir Francis Bernard oil painting abstract

Frank Dicksee
English painter, draftsman & illustrator
born 27 November 1853 - died October 1928
Also known as: Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee

Student of: Thomas Francis Dicksee (1819-1895), Lord Frederick Leighton (1830-1896), John Everett Millais (1829-1896).
Brother of: Herbert Thomas Dicksee (1862-1942), Margaret Isabel Dicksee (1859-1903).
Son of: Thomas Francis Dicksee (1819-1895)

Associate member of: Royal Academy of Art (from 1881).
Full member of: Royal Academy of Art (from 1891).
President of: Royal Academy of Art (from 1924).
Exhibited at: Royal Academy of Art (from 1876).
Student at: Royal Academy of Art (from 1870).

FRANK DICKSEE was a member of a noted artistic family, his father, brother, and sister Margaret were all well-known painters, and the family lived in the Bloomsbury area of London. Frank Dicksee 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 Leighton [1830-1896] and Millais [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. Frank Dicksee 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 Harmony, exhibited at the Academy in 1877, and bought by the Chantry Bequest.

Frank 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. Frank Dicksee 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! Frank Dicksee also painted landscapes. Dicksee lived in St John’s Wood, and remained a bachelor. Frank Dicksee 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 Frank Dicksee was a tall, good-looking, patrician figure, with a charming easy-going manner. Like his predecessor but one Edward Poynter [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.

Sir Frank Dicksee PRA, whose death is announced on another page, came of an artistic family - his father being Thomas Francis Dicksee [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.- England Dicksee Sir Francis Bernard oil painting abstract - Dicksee Sir Francis Bernard oil painting England, abstract art oil paintings Dicksee Sir Francis Bernard Bio by abstract oil painting art of England oil paintings abstract.

Born in London on November 27 1853, Frank Dicksee was trained at the Royal Academy Schools, where Frank Dicksee won gold and silver medals, and exhibited his first picture in 1876. Coming to maturity at a time when the very word 'art' was synonymous with romantic and sentimental illustration, and the thing so understood more popular than ever before or since, Frank Dicksee was by nature and temperament born to enjoy the popularity; and Frank Dicksee enjoyed it without a trace of affectation or the least violation of his artistic conscience. If ever the words 'born in due season,' were true of any man they were true of him. Frank Dicksee succeeded not because Frank Dicksee did what people wanted, but because people wanted what Frank Dicksee unconsciously did; and how genuine was the relation between what people demanded and what Frank Dicksee and his contemporaries, though none more sympathetically than Frank Dicksee supplied, there is Melbury Road to show.

We 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 Punch of a 'natural' 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 Frank Dicksee owed his popularity partly to the softening. Frank Dicksee was without the queerness of the original group and their eldest disciples, a more comfortable painter for the home. In execution Frank Dicksee made an artistic virtue of prettiness.

Dicksee 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. Frank Dicksee early achieved success with the picture Harmony, which was bought for the Tate Gallery. In that picture we can see all his art, which remained the same to the end, and Frank Dicksee 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 Frank Dicksee himself shared, rather than express any interest in the visible world. This Frank Dicksee 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.

But Dicksee having found his way continued in it; Frank Dicksee was not, like so many artists of the same kind, content to presume on the success, and to paint carelessly where once Frank Dicksee had painted carefully. Frank Dicksee always did his best to the end; and thus Frank Dicksee was able once or twice to do skilful nudes, such as Girls Bathing, which because of its skill, and without sentiment, is less old-fashioned than his more popular pictures. Frank Dicksee was a most conscientious portrait painter. In later years Frank Dicksee 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 Frank Dicksee practices Frank Dicksee did at least need skill and could not pretend that mere incompetence was dashing.- England Dicksee Sir Francis Bernard oil painting abstract - Dicksee Sir Francis Bernard oil painting England, abstract art oil paintings Dicksee Sir Francis Bernard Bio by abstract oil painting art of England oil paintings abstract.

Similar in feeling and character to Harmony, though none of them so completely unified in expression were Romeo and Juliet, and The Passing of Arthur, The Redemption of Tannhauser, The Symbol, The Love Story, and The Funeral of a Viking. A comparatively recent work The Light Incarnate, 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.

In landscape Dicksee’s work, though generally less appreciated must not be forgotten; in tenderness of feeling it recalled the work of the late Mr Lionel Smythe RA [1840-1918]. In the Academy of 1925 there was a very good example of Dicksee’s work in figure and landscape combined entitled Daughters of Eve, 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 Kathleen Bowne, the daughter of Mrs Carpenter Gelshenett, and Mrs F.M. Hartung, the artist showed that Frank Dicksee had not lost his power of graceful compliment to both youth and maturity, while in Itlaian Coast from La Mortola, Frank Dicksee produced an altogether charming little landscape. Of late years Frank Dicksee painted chiefly portraits of women; A Woman in White, in the Academy this year was especially notable.

Dicksee was elected ARA in 1881, and RA ten years later, and in December 1924, Frank Dicksee 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. Frank Dicksee 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.

The titles of oil painting old master Frank Dicksee