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Biography of Frank Bernard DickseeEnglish painter, draftsman and illustratorborn 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). |
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Associate member of: Royal
Academy of Art (from 1881). |
After his election as President Dicksee in various speeches denounced certain morbid and unwholesome tendencies in modern art, which Frank Bernard Dicksee 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, Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee 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, Frank Bernard Dicksee was nominated by the new Chancellor of Oxford University, the late Lord Cave, for the honorary degree of DCL. | |||||||
At 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 Frank Bernard Dicksee showed, in his references to
the late Mr John
Sargent RA [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 Frank
Bernard Dicksee 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. Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee has been
spoken of as almost a 'double,' of
George du Maurier
[1834-1896], and in that writer's Trilby
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 Trilby among the
originals including
Whistler
[1834-1903] and
Poynter
[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. There is a real duality running right through this obituary. The writer compliments Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee, but bemoans the obsolete nature of his art. The main points which I feel emerge I set out below. Dicksee did not deteriorate with age, lucky man. His death was sudden, and Frank Bernard Dicksee remained vital and energetic to the end of his life. The comment about Melbury Road refers to Dicksee’s large house in that prosperous area much favoured by successful artists in the late 19th century. |
Until 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’s
art. In the world of Sickert [1860-1942] and
Augustus John
[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’s pictures. The writer is, however,
forced to admit that the painter continued
to work totally conscientiously. Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee 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’s term as PRA by saying it was socially successful. As to who the 'stronger artist,' may have been, Frank Bernard Dicksee does not enlighten us. Perhaps Dicksee was a great President of the Royal Academy? |