William Dyce

{"Id":120,"Name":"William Dyce","Biography":"\u003Cstrong\u003EDYCE, WILLIAM\u003C/strong\u003E (1806-1864), British painter, was born in Aberdeen, where his father, a fellow of the Royal Society, was a physician of some repute. He attended Marischal College, took the degree of M.A. at sixteen years of age, and was destined for one of the learned professions. Showing a turn for design instead, he studied in the school of the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, then as a probationer (not a full student) in the \u003Ca href=\u0022http://www.speel.demon.co.uk/royacad.htm\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003ERoyal Academy\u003C/a\u003E of London, and thence, in 1825, he proceeded to Rome, where he spent nine months. He returned to Aberdeen in 1826, and painted several pictures; one of these, \u003Cu\u003EBacchus nursed by the Nymphs of Nysa\u003C/u\u003E, was exhibited in 1827. In the autumn of that year he went back to Italy, showing from the first a strong sympathy with the earlier masters of the Florentine and allied schools. A \u003Cu\u003EVirgin and Child\u003C/u\u003E which he painted in Rome in 1828 was much noticed by \u003Ca href=\u0022http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/overbeck_johann_friedrich.html\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EOverbeck\u003C/a\u003E and other foreign artists. In 1829 Dyce settled in Edinburgh, taking at once a good rank in his profession, and showing considerable versatility in subject-matter. Portrait-painting for some years occupied much of his time; and he was particularly prized for likenesses of ladies and children. In February 1837 he was appointed master of the school of design of the Board of Manufactures, Edinburgh. In the same year he published a pamphlet on the management of schools of this description, which led to his transfer from Edinburgh, after eighteen months service there, to London, as superintendent and secretary of the then recently established school of design at Somerset House. Dyce was sent by the Board of Trade to the continent to examine the organization of foreign schools; and a report which he eventually printed, 1840, led to a remodelling of the London establishment. In 1842 he was made a member of the council and inspector of provincial schools, a post which he resigned in 1844. In this latter year, being appointed professor of fine art in Kings College, London, he delivered a remarkable lecture, \u003Cu\u003EThe Theory of the Fine Arts\u003C/u\u003E. In 1835 he had been elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy; this honor he relinquished upon settling in London, and he was then made an honorary R.S.A. In 1844 he became an associate, in 1848 a full member, of the London Royal Academy; he also was elected a member of the Academy of Arts in Philadelphia. He was active in the deliberations of the Royal Academy, and it is said that his tongue was the dread of the urbane President, \u003Ca href=\u0022http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/eastlake_sir_charles_lock.html\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003ESir Charles Eastlake\u003C/a\u003E, for Dyce was keen in speech as in visage; it was on his proposal that the class of retired Academicians was established. In January 1850 Dyce married Jane, daughter of Mr James Brand, of Bedford Hill, Surrey. He died at Streatham on the 14th of February 1864, leaving two sons and two daughters.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EDyce was one of the most learned and accomplished of British painters, one of the highest in aim, and most consistently selfrespecting in workmanship. His finest productions, the frescoes in the robing-room in the Houses of Parliament, did honor to the country and time which produced them. Generally, however, there is in Dyce\u0027s work more of earnestness, right conception, and grave, sensitive, but rather restricted powers of realization, than of authentic greatness. He has elevation, draughtsmanship, expression, and on occasion fine color; along with all these, a certain leaning on precedent, and castigated semi-conventionalized type of form and treatment, which bespeak rather the scholarly than the originating mind in art. The following are among his principal or most interesting works (oil pictures, unless otherwise stated). 1829: \u003Cu\u003EThe Daughters of Jethro defended by Moses\u003C/u\u003E ; \u003Cu\u003EPuck\u003C/u\u003E. 1830: \u003Cu\u003EThe Golden Age\u003C/u\u003E ; \u003Cu\u003EThe Infant Hercules strangling the Serpents\u003C/u\u003E (now in the \u003Ca href=\u0022http://www.natgalscot.ac.uk/\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003ENational Gallery, Edinburgh\u003C/a\u003E); \u003Cu\u003EChrist crowned with Thorns\u003C/u\u003E. 1835: \u003Cu\u003EA Dead Christ\u003C/u\u003E (large lunette altarpiece). 1836: \u003Cu\u003EThe Descent of Venus\u003C/u\u003E, from Ben Jonson\u0027s \u003Cu\u003ETriumph of Love\u003C/u\u003E; \u003Cu\u003EThe Judgment of Solomon\u003C/u\u003E, prize cartoon in tempera for tapestry (National Gallery, Edinburgh). 1837: \u003Cu\u003EFrancesca da Rimini\u003C/u\u003E (National Gallery, Edinburgh). 1838, and again 1846: \u003Cu\u003EThe Madonna and Child\u003C/u\u003E. 1839: \u003Cu\u003EDunstan separating Edwy and Elgiva\u003C/u\u003E. 1844: \u003Cu\u003EJoash shooting the Arrow of Deliverance\u003C/u\u003E (the finest perhaps of the oil-paintings). 1850: \u003Cu\u003EThe Meeting of Jacob and Rachel\u003C/u\u003E. 1851: \u003Cu\u003EKing Lear and the Fool in the Storm\u003C/u\u003E. 1855: \u003Cu\u003EChristabel\u003C/u\u003E. 1857: \u003Cu\u003ETitian\u0027s first essay in Coloring\u003C/u\u003E. 1859: \u003Cu\u003EThe Good Shepherd\u003C/u\u003E. 1860: \u003Cu\u003ESt John bringing Home his Adopted Mother\u003C/u\u003E ; \u003Cu\u003EPegwell Bay\u003C/u\u003E (a coastscene of remarkably minute detail, showing the painter\u0027s partial adhesion to the \u003Ca href=\u0022http://www.speel.demon.co.uk/other/prb.htm\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003Epre-Raphaelite movement\u003C/a\u003E). 1861: \u003Cu\u003EGeorge Herbert at Bemerton\u003C/u\u003E.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EDyce executed some excellent cartoons for stained glass: that for the choristers window, \u003Ca href=\u0022http://www.cathedral.ely.anglican.org/\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EEly Cathedral\u003C/a\u003E, and that for a vast window at Ainwick in memory of a duke of Northumberland; the design of \u003Cu\u003EPaul rejected by the Jews\u003C/u\u003E, now at South Kensington, belongs to the latter. In fresco-painting his first work appears to have been the \u003Cu\u003EConsecration of Archbishop Parker\u003C/u\u003E, painted in Lambeth palace. In one of the Westminster Hall competitions for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, he displayed two heads from this composition; and it is related that the great German fresco painter \u003Ca href=\u0022http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/cornelius_peter_von.html\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003ECornelius\u003C/a\u003E, who had come over to England to give advice, with a prospect of himself taking the chief direction of the pictorial scheme, told the prince consort frankly that the English ought not to be asking for him, when they had such a painter of their own as Mr Dyce. The cartoon by Dyce of the \u003Cu\u003EBaptism of Ethelbert\u003C/u\u003E was approved and commissioned for the House of Lords, and is the first of the works done there, 1846, in fresco. In 1848 he began his great frescoes in the Robing-room subjects from the legend of King Arthur, exhibiting chivalric virtue. The whole room was to have been finished in eight years; but ill-health and other vexations trammelled the artist, and the series remains uncompleted. The largest picture figures Hospitality, the admission of Sir Tristram into the fellowship of the Round Table. Then follow Religion, the Vision of Sir Galahad and his Companions; Generosity, Arthur unhorsed, and spared by the Victor; Courtesy, Sir Tristram harping to la Belle Yseult; Mercy, Sir Gawaine\u0027s Vow. The frescoes of sacred subjects in All Saints church, Margaret Street, London; of \u003Cu\u003EComus\u003C/u\u003E, in the summer-house of Buckingham Palace; and of \u003Cu\u003ENeptune and Britannia\u003C/u\u003E, at Osborne House, are also by this painter.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EDyce was an elegant scholar in more ways than one. In 1828 he obtained the Blackwell prize at Aberdeen for an essay on animal magnetism. In 1843-1844 he published an edition of the Book of Common Prayer, with a dissertation on Gregorian music, and its adaptation to English words. He founded the Motett Society, for revival of ancient church-music, was a fine organist, and composed a non nobis which has appropriately been sung at Royal Academy banquets. His last considerable writing relating to his own art was published in 1853, \u003Cu\u003EThe National Gallery: its Formation and Management\u003C/u\u003E.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003ESee Redgrave\u0027s \u003Cu\u003EDictionary of Artists\u003C/u\u003E (1878), and \u003Cu\u003EDictionary of National Biography\u003C/u\u003E. (W. M. R.)\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E\u003Cu\u003ESource:\u003C/u\u003E\u003C/strong\u003E Entry on the artist in the \u003Ca href=\u0022http://43.1911encyclopedia.org/D/DY/DYCE_WILLIAM.htm\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003E1911 Edition Encyclopedia\u003C/a\u003E.\u003Cp\u003E","Awards":null,"HasAlbums":false,"HasPortraits":true,"HasRelationships":false,"HasArticles":false,"HasDepictedPlaces":false,"HasLetters":false,"HasLibraryItems":false,"HasProducts":false,"HasSignatures":false,"HasVideos":false,"HasMapLocations":true,"TotalArtworks":72}