Lowes Cato Dickinson

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Lowes Cato Dickinson
Photo of Dickinson (published 1904)
Born27 November 1819
Kilburn, England
(now London, England)
Died15 December 1908 (aged 89)
Portland Place, London, England
NationalityBritish
Known forPortrait painting

Lowes Cato Dickinson (27 November 1819 – 15 December 1908) was an English portrait painter and

Christian socialist. He taught drawing with John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.[1] He was a founder of the Working Men's College in London.[2]

Life

Dickinson was born in Kilburn, London and was one of eleven siblings. He obtained his first apprenticeship with his father, a Bond Street lithographer and art publisher, after attending Topsham School, and Dr Lord's School in Tooting.[3] After his father's death in 1849, he became a partner with his two eldest brothers, Gilbert Bell Dickinson and William Robert Dickinson, in the firm of Dickinson Brothers of Bond Street. As well as continuing to publish lithographs, the firm were photographers, by appointment to Queen Victoria, and many of Dickinson's portraits were painted from photographs (when portraits were required of people too busy to sit for them, abroad, or dead). Dickinson frequently painted only the faces, with other artists hired to paint the clothes. Some of Dickinson's group pictures were also "subscription pictures", in which people would pay to have themselves portrayed more or less prominently in the painting.[4]

Robert Lowe – ChancellorJohn Bright – Board of TradeGeorge Campbell, Duke of Argyll – IndiaGeorge Villiers, Earl of Clarendon – Foreign AffairsHenry Bruce, Baron Aberdare – Home SecretaryWilliam Wood, Baron Hatherley – Lord ChancellorGeorge Robinson, Earl de Grey and Ripon – Lord President of the CouncilGranville Leveson-Gower, Earl Granville – ColoniesJohn Wodehouse, Earl of Kimberley – Privy SealGeorge Goschen – Poor LawWilliam Ewart Gladstone – Prime MinisterSpencer Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington – Postmaster GeneralChichester Parkinson-Fortescue, Baron Carlingford – IrelandEdward Cardwell – Secretary for WarHugh Childers – First Lord of the AdmiraltyUse your cursor to explore (or click icon to enlarge)
Gladstone's Cabinet of 1868, painted by Lowes Cato Dickinson.[5] Use a cursor to see who is who.[6]

He corresponded and worked with the central participants of the

Royal Academy
, at which he exhibited every year, except three, between 1848 and 1891.

With other Christian Socialists, Dickinson founded the

F. D. Maurice.[8]

Other subjects for portraits included

William Thomson, Sir George Stokes and James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell mentions Dickinson in a poem he wrote to ridicule Cayley, where he notes that his portrait is merely in two dimensions whereas Cayley's achievements were in n-dimensional space.[10]

Dickinson married Margaret Ellen Williams in 1857. Their sons were writer Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson and the accountant Arthur Lowes Dickinson;[11] they also had five daughters. He died in a house built for himself in All Souls Place just north of Oxford Circus, and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. His papers are at Princeton,[1] Oxford and Cambridge Universities.[7]

Legacy

Dickinson has numerous paintings in the

cabinet room of 10 Downing Street.[2] The Working Men's College offers an annual £1000 pound Art prize for its students called the Lowes Dickinson Award[12] His children also established a travel award for students in his memory.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Lowes Cato Dickinson Correspondence, 1851-1907". Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division. Retrieved 30 January 2010.
  2. ^ a b Lowes Cato Dickinson, National Portrait Gallery, accessed January 2010
  3. ^ required.)
  4. ^ "Dickinson Brothers".
  5. ^ Gladstone's Cabinet of 1868, Lowes Cato Dickinson, ref. NPG 5116, National Portrait Gallery, London, accessed January 2010
  6. . Retrieved 30 January 2010.
  7. ^ a b Artists' Papers Register, accessed January 2010
  8. ^ a b J. F. C. Harrison ,A History of the Working Men's College (1854-1954), Routledge Kegan Paul, 1954
  9. ^ Charles Kingsley, National Portrait Gallery, accessed January 2010
  10. . Retrieved 14 December 2016.
  11. ^ "Fisher College of Business - The Accounting Hall of Fame".
  12. ^ Lowes Dickinson Award Archived 2011-10-04 at the Wayback Machine, accessed August 2010

Sources

Macmillan, George Augustin (1912). "Dickinson, Lowes" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.

External links

Media related to Lowes Cato Dickinson at Wikimedia Commons