Sir Frank Dicksee, Artist

This is the story of the famous artist Frank Dicksee who lived at No. 3 Greville Place from 1897 until his death in 1928. Greville Place is off the Kilburn end of Maida Vale, and the house has now been sub-divided.

The unusual Dicksee family name is traced back to Frank’s grandfather Richard Cox. He and his brother John were unwillingly press-ganged into the Navy in 1807. After several miserable years at sea, they deserted and used Richard’s nickname of ‘Dick C’ to become Dicksee. They returned to Swallow Street in Soho where they worked as ‘boot closers’ making the leather uppers of shoes, hidden in the cellar under their house. They were only able to lead a normal life in 1815 when an amnesty was granted on naval deserters. 

Richard’s son Thomas Francis Cox was born in 1819, and the family moved to 23 Howland Street in Bloomsbury when Swallow Street was demolished to build Regent Street. The family latter changed their name from Cox to Dicksee. 

Thomas Dicksee showed an early talent for art, and after working for his father making shoes, he began a six-month apprenticeship in the studio of the painter HP Briggs. By 1842 Thomas and his brother John set up their own studio at 53 Old Compton Street. Here they both established reputations as portrait painters, with Thomas being the more successful. 

A few years later in 1848, a group of young artists formed The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in John Millais parents’ house in Gower Street. Later, they were to have a major influence on Frank Dicksee.

Thomas Dicksee prospered, and in 1869 moved to an elegant house No.2 Fitzroy Square with a studio in a converted coach house. His close friend was the portrait painter William Lee and his beautiful wife Harriet who was an opera singer. Regular visitors to Lee’s house were the actors Sir Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and the composer Arthur Sullivan. William and Harriet encouraged Thomas Dicksee to set up his own weekly salons of artists, literary and musical men and woman. The Dicksee’s stayed in Fitzroy Square for 25 years. 

Thomas’ first son Frances (Frank) Bernard Dicksee was born in 1852. Frank was a child prodigy and could draw before he could write his own name. Thomas taught Frank and his sister Margaret (Minnie) to paint. When he was 17, Frank got a place at the Royal Academy Schools. The tuition was free, but there was fierce competition for the limited number of places, and the entrance requirements were high. In 1871 there were 55 students at the RA, and Frank was inspired by visiting tutors such as John Everitt Millais and Frederic Leighton, the most brilliant teachers the schools had ever known. During his time at the RA schools Frank was commissioned to illustrate several books.

After his graduation in 1875, he took an apprenticeship with Henry Holiday, the artist and stained glass designer. For one day a week Frank also worked as a tutor at the prestigious girls’ school, Queen’s College in Harley Street where his father had been an examiner. A number of Dicksee’s later female models had previously been pupils at Queen’s College. One was Helen Maud Holt who became a famous actress and theatre manager under her married name of Lady Beerbohm Tree. She helped Lillie Langtry begin her stage career.

Frank’s picture ‘Harmony’ was painted in 1875 and showed a young man listening enrapt as his lover played an organ. The model was Gaetano Meo, an assistant to Henry Holland, who also modelled for Burne-Jones and Rossetti. When he died in 1925 Meo was buried in Hampstead Cemetery in Fortune Green Road.

The picture was hung ‘on the line’ in a prominent position at the RA exhibition of 1877. It took London by storm and was voted picture of the year in a poll in the Art Journal. Dicksee accepted 350 guineas (worth about £37,000 today) for the painting from the RA on the same day a dealer offered three times the amount.

The following year Frank gave his teaching position at Queens’ College to his sister Minnie so he could accept the invitation to work for a month as a visiting tutor at the RA life classes. In 1879 another of his pictures ‘Evangeline’ based on a poem by Longfellow, sold for £700 and he made a good income from illustrations of the picture. Longfellow liked the picture and wrote a letter of praise to the publisher. With this rapid success Frank, aged just 27, was inundated with requests and that year he made two portraits of Lillie Langtry. 

In 1883 he left the family home and rented Peel Cottage, a detached house with a studio at 108 Peel Street Campden Hill, in Kensington. Frank lived here and hired a widow, Kate Till, as his housekeeper and cook. 

The beautiful women in his pictures were often actresses, like Mary Eastlake and Kate Dolan, who he painted as ‘Beatrice’ in 1887. 

Kate Dolan as Beatrice

Kate was a model for several Brotherhood artists, Burne-Jones, Leighton and Millais who used her for the stunning ‘Portia’ in 1886. 

In November 1887 Dicksee was almost killed in the first of two serious accidents. He was walking in a street when the horse of a lady carriage driver was spooked and bolted. He managed to catch the reins as they galloped past and he stopped the horse. But he was kicked, and he had been crushed between the carriage and a post in the road. After returning home he found his leg was badly damaged and his hand was immobile. The doctor ordered him to stay in bed for a fortnight. 

His father Thomas died in November 1895, and two years later Frank bought the large Greville House in Greville Place. His unmarried sisters Minnie and Polly, and his aunt Alice joined him there. Now very successful, the following year he built a studio at the rear. This was paid for when he sold ‘An Offering’ for £1,200. The models were Rachel Lee and Antonio Corsi, who became a film actor in Hollywood in the 20’s.

With the move Dicksee became an active member of the artistic community of St John’s Wood and the meetings took place at Greville House. When his close friend the architect Henry Shepard died in 1902, Frank promised he would give financial help and support to his son Ernest who was starting his career as an artist. Later Ernest Shepard became famous as the illustrator of AA Milne’s book ‘Winnie the Pooh’. 

At the beginning of the 20th Century, Frank’s romantic style of painting heavily influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, went out of favour with the critics. But his portraits of wealthy people provided a good income, and he continued to produce beautiful pictures such as ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’. Based on a poem by John Keats, this is one of his best-known paintings, and today is in the Bristol City Art Gallery.

In June 1921 Frank was involved in a second serious accident. At 1.00 in the morning, he went to post a letter in the letter box in Maida Vale, and he was hit by a car while crossing the road. He was taken to St Mary’s Hospital in Praed Street where he fortunately recovered after about a week. 

Dicksee was finally elected President of the Royal Academy in 1924 and served to 1928, when he reached the compulsory retirement age 75. He used the position to voice his dislike of modern art, and women’s flapper style of short dresses and bobbed hair. 

In October 1928 Frank was unwell and admitted to the Cambridge Nursing Home at 4 Dorset Square where following an operation he died. His funeral was held in Westminster Abbey, and he was buried in the family grave in Hampstead Cemetery. He left £37,905 (worth about £2.4M today) to his family. 

There is a very good biography by Simon Toll (2016), ‘Frank Dicksee: His Art and Life’.

Here is a link to a slide show of 50 of Dicksee’s paintings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdoikvO2N3k