William Dyce (1806-1864) was a Scottish artist known for his contributions to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and his role in the mid-19th-century art scene in England. Here are some key points about William Dyce:1. **Early Life and Education**: William Dyce was born on September 19, 1806, in Aberdeen, Scotland. He initially studied at the Marischal College in Aberdeen and later pursued his artistic education at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.2. **Early Career**: Dyce began his career as an artist with a foc on historical and biblical subjects. His early works reflected academic traditions and classical themes.3. **Involvement with the Pre-Raphaelites**: Dyce was a mentor and supporter of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of young artists who rejected the academic conventions of their time and sought to return to the styles of art before the High Renaissance (hence "Pre-Raphaelite"). He influenced and collaborated with several members of the Brotherhood.4. **"Pegwell Bay, Kent - A Recollection of October 5th, 1858"**: Dyce is perhaps best known for this landscape painting, which is a masterpiece of the Pre-Raphaelite style. It captures a vivid and detailed coastal scene and is celebrated for its meticulo attention to nature and light.5. **Artistic Style**: Dyce's style was characterized by a foc on detail, naturalism, and vibrant colors. He often incorporated symbolism and allegorical elements into his works.6. **Role in Art Institutions**: Dyce played a significant role in the art institutions of his time. He was a professor of Fine Arts at King's College London and later served as the Director of the Government School of Design (later the Royal College of Art).7. **Religio and Historical Themes**: Throughout his career, Dyce continued to produce works with religio and historical themes, often drawing from his Scottish heritage and interest in Celtic art and culture.8. **Legacy**: William Dyce's contributions to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and his role in promoting a return to detailed naturalism had a lasting impact on British art. His work influenced the development of the Pre-Raphaelite style, which would go on to influence subsequent art movements.9. **Death and Posthumo Recognition**: William Dyce passed away on February 14, 1864. In the years following his death, there has been a renewed interest in his work and legacy, with exhibitions and retrospectives celebrating his contributions to British art.William Dyce is remembered as an important figure in the Pre-Raphaelite movement and for his dedication to detailed and naturalistic depictions of the world around him. His influence on the art of his time and his role in fostering the talents of younger artists continue to be acknowledged and appreciated. Measures 21.5 x 30.
WILLIAM DYCE (SCOTTISH 1806-1884) PORTRAIT OF ALEXANDER JARDINE Oil on canvas (121.5cm x 91cm (48in x 36in)) Provenance: By descent within the family of the sitter Exhibited: Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1834, no.6 Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh,1835, no.99 Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen, William Dyce and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision, 9 September - 11 November 2006, p.69 Literature: Marcia Pointon, William Dyce 1806-1884: A Critical Biography, Clarendon Press, Oxord, 1979, p.188, pl.39
Attributed to William Dyce RSA RA (1806-1864) Study of a kneeling woman holding a drapery oil on canvas laid down 29 x 22.5cm Condition Report: overall: 41 x 34cm
Attributed to William Dyce RA ARSA (British, 1806-1864) Picking primulas bears monogram and date (lower right) oil on canvas 59.5 x 45 cm. (23 7/16 x 17 11/16 in.) For further information on this lot please visit the Bonhams website
POSSIBLY WILLIAM DYCE (BRITISH, 1806-1864) MADONNA AND CHILD Oil on canvas: 31 x 23 in. Framed; after the painting at the Tate Gallery, London (T00618); Dyce is known to have made several versions of the Madonna and Child between circa 1828 and 1845.
William Dyce RA ARSA (British, 1806-1864) Girl with a Muff oil on canvas, 76 x 63.5 cm. (29 15/16 x 25 in.) Painted circa 1825 Footnotes Provenance The Artist's Family Gifted to the present owner Literature Marcia Pointon, William Dyce 1806-1864, Oxford, 1979, plate 30 (captions for plates 30/31 reversed)
William Dyce 1806 Aberdeen - 1864 London - Dora Louisa Grant mit Kaninchen - Öl/Lwd. 92 x 70,8 cm. Doubl. Rahmen. Rest. Etw. Rest. bed. - Lit.: Pointon, Marcia: William Dyce 1806-1864. A Critical Biography. Oxford University Press 1979, S. 188. Abb. Nr. 36. - Prov.: Privatbesitz Norddeutschland, ehem. Besitz Familie Pelham-Clinton. - Wir danken Prof. Marcia Pointon, Manchester für die freundliche Bestätigung. Gefragter, schottischer Porträtmaler sowie Schöpfer historischer und religiöser Kompositionen. Das Bildnis der sechsjährigen Dora Louisa Grant, ein Kaninchen haltend, wurde erstmals 1833 in der Royal Academy ausgestellt. Die Provenienz des Gemäldes lässt sich bis zu seiner Entstehung zurückverfolgen.
WILLIAM DYCE, R.A., H.R.S.A. 1806-1864 STUDY OF A SAINT FOR THE FRESCO IN ALL SAINT'S MARGARET STREET, 1849 oil on paper laid on board 48.5 by 40.5cm., 19 by 16in.
Portrait of Euphemia A. Murray of Lintrose (b.1769) and her daughter, half-length, the mother in a red dress, the daughter in a white dress inscribed 'Euphemia A. Murray/of Lintrose/Wife of David Smythe of Methven' (on the reverse) and 'Mrs Smyth of Methven/(Euphemia A. Murray, daughter of Mungo Murray of Lintrose)/and Grandson R...J. Boyle/by Dyce 1833.' (on an old label on the reverse) oil on canvas 36 x 28 1/8 in. (91.4 x 71.4 cm.)
Hotspur and the Courtier oil on canvas 39 x 53 in. (99 x 134.6 cm.) LITERATURE Athenaeum, no. 1269, 21 February 1852, p. 231. EXHIBITION London, British Institution, 1852, no. 447. Shakespeare in Western Art, 1992-3, no. 70. NOTES Rainford is one of those tantalisingly obscure figures who clearly adhere to an important movement (in his case, Pre-Raphaelitism), but whose actual careers are shrouded in mystery. In 1850 he is recorded living in, or at any rate having a studio in, Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury, and since this was the heart of London's bohemian quarter in the mid-nineteenth century, he was probably in touch with a number of other artists. However, if any references to him are lurking in the literature, they have yet to be spotted. In particular, we lack any information about the contact he surely had with the Pre-Raphaelites, the crucial influence on his style. One reason for his obscurity is his relatively short period of activity and the corresponding rarity of his work. He seems to have exhibited only six pictures, three at the Royal Academy between 1850 and 1864 and three at the British Institution between 1852 and 1864. Three Shakespearean subjects and An Interior (British Institution 1854) were shown in fairly quick succession, and then there was a gap until 1864, when a view in Sicily was exhibited at each of the two venues. This strongly suggests that he gave up painting for travel and other pursuits. Only two examples of Rainford's work have actually been identified, the present picture and Celia telling Rosalind that Orlando is in the Forest, a scene from As You Like It which was exhibited at the RA in 1853. Formerly in the Leverhulme collection and included in Sotheby's Thornton Manor sale, 26-8 June 2001, lot 397, the latter picture is obviously indebted to Millais, and indeed was long attributed to the master himself. The first Lord Leverhulme bought it as such as early as 1902, and it was still sailing under false colours when it appeared in the exhibition to mark the centenary of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood held at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, in 1948. The present picture is another of Rainford's Shakespearean subjects (the third, still missing, was an illustration to Cymbeline ). It is inspired by Hotspur's speech in Henry IV, Part I Act I, Scene 3. The warlord is explaining his failure to send prisoners to the King after suppressing an insurrection in the north, saying that he was annoyed by the effeminate manners of the courtier who came to demand them: My liege, I did deny no prisoners: But I remember, when the fight was done, When I was dry with rage and extreme toil, Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress'd, Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new reap'd, Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home: He was perfumed like a milliner, And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held A pouncet-box, which ever and anon He gave his nose and took't away again;............... With many holiday and lady terms He question'd me; among the rest, demanded My prisoners in your majesty's behalf. I then all smarting with my wounds being cold, To be so pester'd with a popinjay, Out of my grief and my impatience Answer'd neglectingly, I know not what, He should, or he should not. The picture was the first of those that Rainford showed at the British Institution, appearing there in 1852. By now he had moved from Charlotte Street and was living at the more up-market address of 7 Grafton Street, Mayfair. It was now four years since the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had been launched, and the Brothers and their associates were still adhering to the movement's original principles. At the Royal Academy this year Millais was showing Ophelia (Tate Gallery) and A Hugenot (private collection), Holman Hunt The Hireling Shepherd (Manchester), and Madox Brown The Pretty Baa-Lambs (Birmingham) and Jesus washing Peter's Feet (Tate Gallery). Rainford's picture has all the hallmarks of the style, close attention to detail, brilliance of colour, an interest in pyschology, and a certain wilful quaintness. It might almost be a textbook example of what were currently perceived as Pre-Raphaelitism's outrageous eccentricities. It was still only two years since Dickens had launched a vitriolic attack on Millais' Carpenter's Shop (Tate Gallery), and only one since Ruskin, urged on by William Dyce, had come to the beleaguered Brothers' defence in two letters to the Times. Florence Claxton's well-known satire on the Pre-Raphaelite style would not appear until 1860. Du Maurier's parodies in Punch were as late as 1866. Given this climate of opinion, it is hardly surprising that Hotspur and the Courtier came in for its share of obloquy. The art critic on the Athenaeum thought it 'the worst example' of Pre-Raphaelite 'mania' in the British Institution's exhibition. 'There could', he continued, 'be no more effectual comment on the absurdity of the practice...It is a caricature on the extravagant theories of the school, - a censure on those who would elevate it into consideration, - a libel on even the illuminated page of the medieval missal which it affects to imitate'. No doubt the writer would have been astonished to learn that, a hundred and fifty years later, Pre-Raphaelitism is regarded as the most significant development in British art in the mid-nineteenth century. It is interesting to compare Hotspur and the Courtier with the Leverhulme Celia and Rosalind, exhibited at the RA a year later, and to note how much less our picture is indebted to Millais. That stylistic shift, from a fairly generalised Pre-Raphaelite idiom in 1852 to a more specifically Millaisian mode in 1853, is all we know at present about Rainford's artistic development. It is curious that the subject of the encounter between the battle-scarred Hotspur and the foppish courtier was not painted more often by the Victorians, offering as it did such a golden opportunity to explore a clash of temperaments and character. The only other example so far identified is a lost painting by Alfred Elmore exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1851, and it is perhaps no coincidence that Rainford showed his version only a year later. Certainly the Athenaeum linked the two pictures, calling Rainford's 'a travesty of Mr Elmore's able work'. For a wood-engraving after Elmore's picture, see the Art Journal, 1857, p. 113.
St John leading home his adopted Mother oil on panel 141/2 x 12 3/8 in. (36.8 x 31.4 cm.) PROVENANCE Anon. sale, Christie's, London, 8 May 1962, lot 132 (570 gns to Maas). Charles and Lavinia Handley-Read, and by descent to Thomas Stainton. with The Fine Art Society, London, from whom acquired by the present owner in 1986. ENGRAVED J. Thompson (Victoria and Albert Museum proof 16141). LITERATURE A. Staley, 'William Dyce and outdoor Naturalism', Burlington Magazine, vol. 105, no. 728, November 1963, p. 474. M. Pointon, Willim Dyce 1806-1864: A Critical Biography, Oxford, 1979, p. 195. EXHIBITION London, Maas Gallery, The Pre-Raphaelites and their Contemporaries, 1962, no. 126. Aberdeen, City Art Gallery, and Agnew, Centenary Exhibition of the Work of William Dyce, RA, 1964, no. 21, lent by Charles Handley-Read. Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts: The Handley-Read Collection, 1972, no. A40. Paintings, Water-colours and Drawings from the Handley-Read Collection, 1974, no. 27. Virtue Rewarded, 1988-90, no. 37. NOTES St John, the disciple 'whom Jesus loved', who wrote the fourth Gospel and witnessed the vision on the island of Patmos which is described in Revelation, was commissioned by Christ on the cross to take care of His mother. In this deeply moving picture, so typical of Dyce in its restrained emotion and its formal clarity, the apostle conducts the Virgin home after the terrible ordeal of watching the crucifixion, he walking slowly and upright, she leaning on his arm, scarcely able to walk for grief. The picture is a small variant of the better-known work in the Tate Gallery (fig. 1), in which the figures move in the other direction and a landscape-shaped composition allows Christ's tomb to be shown on the right. There is also a conceptual difference; largely because the Virgin is shown more composed but in deepest mourning, the mood is at once more sombre and more restrained. Authorities disagree over the dating of the two versions. The Tate picture is generally said to have been starteed in 1841/2 and revised in 1851, but Marcia Pointon dates the revision to 1857 and gives 1844-60 as the overall period of gestation. Both she and the cataloguer of the Fine Art Society exhibition ( loc. cit. ) date the present version to the mid-1840s, but in 1963 Allen Staley wrote that it 'presumably dates from 1851, the year Dyce revised the larger picture' ( loc. cit. ). What is not in doubt is that both versions betray Dyce's adherance to the Nazarene tradition and reflect his deep religious faith. A devout Anglo-Catholic, with a keen interest in ecclesiology, church music and ritual, he often chose such sympathetic subjects. Henry VI at Towton (Guildhall Art Gallery) shows the agonised battlefield meditations of a King renowned for his piety and the founder of two great educational establishments, Eton College and King's College, Cambridge. George Herbert at Bemerton (same location) focuses on the early seventeenth-century divine who wrote some of the best-loved devotional poetry in the English language. Dyce's subject in the present picture finds a certain parallel in Rossetti's watercolour Mary in the House of St John (fig. 2), dating from 1856-8. There are of course connections. Although he was not conventionally religious, Anglo-Catholicism played a crucial part in Rossetti's imaginative development, while Dyce was a great admirer of the Pre-Raphaelites. In fact it was he who brought Ruskin to their defence in 1851, thus causing a sea-change in their critical fortunes. A small oil sketch, closer to the Tate version than to ours, is in the Aberdeen Art Gallery (Pointon, pl. 89). Like lots 34 and 297, our picture belonged to those great pioneers of the Victorian revival, Charles and Lavinia Handley-Read.
Inscribed on reverse of canvas (hidden by relining): W. Dyce, 1830, oil on canvas 90 by 122.5 cm.; 35 1/2 by 48 1/2 in. Between 1825 and 1836, Dyce painted three portraits of members of the Jardine family who owned this painting, Alexander, Catherine Dorcas Maule and Jane Home Jardine (collection Col. Sir William E. Jardine of Applegirth). This work which dates from the early 1830's when the young artist lived in Edinburgh, reflects the strong influence of Bonington. PROVENANCE Sir William Jardine, Bt., of Applegirth: A.F. Nicholls EXHIBITED Possibly Scottish Academy, 1832, no. 197 LITERATURE Marcia Pointon, William Dyce, 1979, pp. 20, 189, no. 44.
