William Dyce

William Dyce FRSE RSA RA (19 September 1806, Aberdeen – 14 February 1864, London) was a distinguished Scottish artist, who played a significant part in the formation of public art education in the United Kingdom, as perhaps the true parent of the South Kensington Schools system.

Dyce began his career at the Royal Academy schools, and then traveled to Rome for the first time in 1825. While he was there, he studied the works of Titian and Poussin. 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. After these travels, he 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.

He 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, 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.[1] 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.
Pegwell Bay

Later in his career, he gave himself to fresco-painting, and as a fresco-painter was selected to adorn the walls of the Palace of Westminster. He returned to Italy in 1845-7, in order to observe the fresco techniques employed there in preparation for work at Westminster. He was particularly impressed by Pinturicchio’s frescoes in the Piccolomini Library in Siena, as well as by the works of Perugino.

His 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.[2]

He was also interested in music, especially church music, playing the organ and composing works that outlasted him.

The largest collection of William Dyce's work is displayed at Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland.

Dyce was commissioned to decorate the Queen's Robing Room of the newly completed Palace of Westminster. He chose to illustrate the various Christian virtues in the legend, and 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 favor 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.

References

^ Frayling, Christopher, The Royal College of Art: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Art and Design, pp. 17-22, 1987, Barrie & Jenkins, London, ISBN 0712618201
^ Tate Gallery

External links

The Quest for the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art, 1840-1920
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
Phryne's list of pictures in accessible collections in the UK
The Pre-Raph Pack Discover more about the artists, the techniques they used and a timeline spanning 100 years.

Iian Neill. "William Dyce (1806 - 1864)". Art Renewal Center. Retrieved 2006-01-30.

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