William Dyce FRSE RSA RA (/daɪs/; 19 September 1806 in Aberdeen – 14 February 1864) was a Scottish painter, who played a part in the formation of public art education in the United Kingdom, and the South Kensington Schools system. Dyce was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and played a part in their early popularity.
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Dyce, Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th, 1858
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(piano music) Woman: So we're looking at William Dyce's Pegwell Bay Kent, a recollection of October 5th, 1858. Man: It must be a very specific date. There is actually even a comet up in the sky in the center, which probably was a specific event at that moment. Woman: Visible on a particular date in 1858. Man: That notion of the particular, of the specific, seems critical throughout the whole canvas. Woman: He's painting the cliffs there so carefully and specifically and really everything in the painting from the objects in the foreground through the stone in the background is painted very carefully. Obviously William Dyce has been influenced by the pre-Raphaelite movement. Man: But there is a kind of specificity and a kind of intricate detail that speaks to it, although the colors are much more subdued, and the subject is a more standard image of the seacoast of the resort, right? Woman: Yeah, although we don't see a kind of modern life seen of vacationing on the resort in a simple way. I think we have a much more mysterious and disconcerting image of figures who seem strangely isolated from one another across the foreground. A child who looks out and two women who are separately engaged in collecting seashells. These are all, I think, members of the artist's family. Then the woman on the right who heads in yet another direction with some figures that are also kind of isolated, strewn across the background and it's obviously late in the day. It's low tide and the figures are very small in relationship to the landscape. There is a clear sense I think of human being smallness in relationship to nature or awe and wonder at nature. Man: I think that makes sense, especially with the comet right? And the grand cliffs, and the distance of the vista. And in a way, the artist is also using color. I mean even though the women and the boy are dressed in relatively subdued colors, those are still among the brightest colors in the canvas. They do stand out as something different and apart, not only from each other but from the landscape. Woman: That's true. The landscape exists really apart from them in a kind of timelessness. Man: He seems to be interested in details that seem almost scientific. The strata of the cliffs seem to be particularly carefully rendered, as if he had been studying geology. Woman: Yeah and I think there is some sense that Dyce was interested in geology and just the enormous interest at this time in nature and science, and amateur science. Man: I think about the women collecting sea shells. They're being collected for their beauty but also as scientific specimens. Woman: I said there is a sense of timelessness. There is also a sense of the measuring of time by the strata on the cliffs, by the sun going down. There is a sense of the passage of time. I mean this almost reads to me as a Memento Mori in a way. Maybe reminder of death is too strong. I feel like I have been on holiday with my family in places just like this doing similar activities and so it becomes very poignant I think about Dyce himself, the artist on this day with his child, with his family, in this place that removes one from one's everyday life and puts one in touch with something that is more mysterious, whether that mystery is in science and nature, or whether the mystery is in God. Man: I think that's exactly right because we have the sense of the specific day, the specific moment, but we also have a sense of the eternal here, of the way in which this scene is encapsulated within as much grander scene of the solar system of the universe. Woman: And so our lives here in the year 2010 are in some ways not so different from William Dice's in 1858. We still go on holiday. We go to places like this. We live in a modern industrial, urban world that we escape from to places like this, that take us someplace else. (piano music)
Life
Dyce was born on the 19 September 1806 at 48 Marischal Street[1] in Aberdeen, the son of William Dyce of Fonthill and Cuttlehill FRSE (1770–1835) and Margaret Chalmers of Westburn (1776–1856). His uncle was General Alexander Dyce FRSE (died 1834). His older brother was Robert Dyce FRSE.[2]
After studying at Marischal College, Dyce early showed an aptitude for design and began his artistic career at the Royal Academy schools in Edinburgh and London.[3] He travelled to Rome for the first time in 1825, and while there he studied the works of Titian and Poussin. He returned to Aberdeen after nine months, and painted several pictures, including Bacchus nursed by the Nymphs of Nysa, which was exhibited in 1827.[3] He returned to Rome in 1827, this time staying for a year and a half, and during this period he appears to have made the acquaintance of the German Nazarene painter Friedrich Overbeck, who admired Dyce's Virgin and Child. After these travels, Dyce settled for several years in Edinburgh. He supported himself by painting portraits at first, but soon took to other subjects of art, especially the religious subjects he preferred.
In 1837 Dyce was given charge of the School of Design in Edinburgh, and was then invited to London, where he was based thereafter, to head the newly established Government School of Design,[3] later to become the Royal College of Art. Before taking up this post in 1838 he and a colleague were sent to visit France and Germany to enquire into design education there and prepare a report. He left the school in 1843, to be able to paint more, but remained a member of the Council of the school.[4] The ideas that were turned in the following decade into the "South Kensington system" that dominated English art education for the rest of the century really have their origin in Dyce's work.
In 1844, having been appointed professor of fine art in King's College London, he delivered a significant lecture, The Theory of the Fine Arts. In 1835 he had been elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy, an honour he relinquished upon settling in London, and he was then made an honorary member. In 1844 he became an associate, and in 1848 a full member, of the London Royal Academy of Arts; he also was elected a member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.[3] Around this time, Dyce moved to Cheyne Walk in the artistic quarter of Chelsea, London.[5]
In 1849 when the new 'godless' florin coins were introduced by the Royal Mint, Dyce was responsible for the reverse design showing crowned cruciform shields bisected with emblems of the rose, thistle and shamrock in the angles. He also took on the similar design used on the reverse of the later Queen Victoria 'gothic head' florins which were issued from 1851 to 1887.
Dyce is less known for, but nevertheless important as, the founder of the Motett Society (1840–1852), which sought to advance the restoration and liturgical use of long-neglected works of the English church. He was noted as an able organist, and is also reputed to have composed some musical works (unverified).
Dyce died in Streatham in Surrey on 14 February 1864. He is buried in the churchyard of St Leonard’s Church in Streatham. He is also memorialised on his parents' grave in St Nicholas Churchyard on Union Street in Aberdeen,[6] and there is a street in Streatham named for him – William Dyce Mews.[7] A stained glass window in St Machar's Cathedral in Aberdeen is jointly dedicated to Dyce.[8]
Collections
Dyce's most highly thought of painting today is his exceptionally detailed seaside landscape of Pegwell Bay in Kent, now in the Tate Gallery. A rather atypical work, it is fully titled Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5th 1858, and was exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1860.[9] The largest collection of Dyce's work is held at Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland.
A lengthy assessment of his art and influence was written by William Michael Rossetti in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition.[10]
Pre-Raphaelites
Dyce is the figure in Scottish art most associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. He befriended the young Pre-Raphaelites in London and introduced their work to the influential art critic John Ruskin.[11] His later work was Pre-Raphaelite in its spirituality, as can be seen in his The Man of Sorrows and David in the Wilderness (both 1860), which contain a Pre-Raphaelite attention to detail.[12]
Westminster frescoes
Later in his career, Dyce turned to fresco-painting, and was selected to execute a series of murals at the newly completed the Palace of Westminster.[13] In preparation for work at Westminster, he returned to Italy in 1845–47, to observe the fresco techniques employed there. He was particularly impressed by Pinturicchio's frescoes in the Piccolomini Library in Siena, and by the works of Perugino.
Dyce was commissioned to decorate the Queen's Robing Room in the Palace. He chose as his subject the Arthurian legends,[14] He had some difficulty adapting the Courtly love of Malory's tales to Victorian mores. The Arthurian legend became popular later in the Victorian period, but when Dyce received the commission to decorate the room in 1847, it was still an obscure subject. The legend soon became a major problem for Dyce, as it turns on the unfaithfulness of a queen, which causes the fall of a kingdom.
After initially experimenting with a narrative sequence in which the tale would unfold in the room's panels, Dyce abandoned this in favour of an allegorical approach. In their finished form, Dyce's frescoes depict scenes from the Arthurian legend that are intended to exemplify the virtues inscribed beneath them. The actions of the figures in his frescoes appear to the modern viewer to convey qualities whose status as virtues is uncertain, and the connection between the episodes from the Arthurian legend and the virtues they represent is sometimes difficult to discern. The virtues depicted are Mercy, Hospitality, Generosity, Religion, and Courtesy. Two projected frescoes, Courage and Fidelity, were never executed.
Dyce was working on the frescoes in Westminster when he collapsed, and later died at his home in Streatham on 14 February 1864. He was buried at St Leonard's Church, Streatham. A nearby drinking fountain, designed in the neo-Gothic style by Dyce, was subsequently dedicated to him by the parishioners.
Family
In 1850 Dyce married Jane Bickerton Brand (died 1885).
Dyce's nephew (his sister's son) was the engineer William Dyce Cay,[15] and his niece was the social activist Meredith Jemima Brown.
Gallery of works
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Lamentation over the Dead Christ, 1835, Aberdeen Art Gallery
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St Joseph, 1847, Windsor Castle
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The Highland Ferryman, 1857, Aberdeen Art Gallery
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Titian Preparing To Make His First Essay In Colouring, 1856 - 1857, Aberdeen Art Gallery
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Beatrice, 1859, Aberdeen Art Gallery
References
- ^ Aberdeen Post Office Directory 1824
- ^ Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X.
- ^ a b c d Rossetti 1911, p. 743.
- ^ Frayling, Christopher, The Royal College of Art: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Art and Design, pp. 17–22, 1987, Barrie & Jenkins, London, ISBN 0-7126-1820-1
- ^ "Settlement and building: Artists and Chelsea Pages 102-106 A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 12, Chelsea". British History Online. Victoria County History, 2004. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
- ^ "Dr William Dyce (1770-1835) - Find a Grave". Find a Grave.
- ^ "William Dyce Mews · London SW16 6AQ, UK".
- ^ Stained Glass in St Machar's Cathedral
- ^ Tate Gallery
- ^ Rossetti 1911, pp. 743–744.
- ^ D. Macmillan, Scottish Art 1460–1990 (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1990), ISBN 0500203334, p. 348.
- ^ M. MacDonald, Scottish Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), ISBN 0500203334, p. 100.
- ^ The complex history surrounding the decoration is best summarized by T. S. R. Boase, The Decorations of the New Palace of Westminster 1841–1863, in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 17:1954, pp. 319–358.
- ^ "The Legend of King Arthur". UK Parliament. Retrieved 5 June 2012.
- ^ "Dictionary of Scottish Architects - DSA Architect Biography Report (July 29, 2021, 3:18 am)".
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed. (1907). The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne.
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External links
- 58 artworks by or after William Dyce at the Art UK site
- The Quest for the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art, 1840–1920
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rossetti, William Michael (1911). "Dyce, William". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). pp. 743–744.
- Phryne's list of pictures in accessible collections in the UK
- The Pre-Raph Pack – More about the artists, the techniques they used and a timeline spanning 100 years
- Iian Neill. "William Dyce (1806–1864)". Art Renewal Center. Retrieved 30 January 2006.
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This page was last edited on 10 July 2023, at 00:20