Sir Frank Dicksee was an English painter and illustrator active in the Victorian era.
Originally taught by his father, artist Thomas Dicksee, along with his brother, Herbert, and sister, Margaret, who were also artists of note, Frank Dicksee went on to study at the Royal Academy. There he learned from renowned painters like Frederick Lord Leighton and Pre-Raphaelite master Sir John Everett Millais.
Like the Pre-Raphaelites and other Victorian painters, Dicksee took much inspiration in literary works, in particular Shakespeare, interpreting scenes like the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet (image above, top) more than once.
Dicksee’s lushly colored, richly detailed works evoke the romance of his literary sources, as well as projecting romance into his elegant portraits.
He was a staunch believer in the traditions and beauty of Victorian High Art, and was vehemently opposed to the dissolution of those traditions at the hands of the early 20th Century Modernists.
The Google Art Project (see my post here) features a zoomable image of Dicksee’s The Two Crowns from the Tate Britain (image and detail, above, bottom). While not as high resolution as the larger images on the project, it’s probably the largest reproduction of a Frank Dicksee painting you’ll find on the web. (The reproduction is a bit murky; I’ve taken the liberty of color correcting it here.)
