William Dyce, 1806-1864
King Joash Shooting "the Arrow of Deliverance"
Oil on canvas
76.3 x 109.5 cms | 30 x 43 ins
Kunsthalle, Hamburg
Elisha's Final Prophecy: …16Then Elisha said to the king of Israel, “Put your hand on the bow.” So the king put his hand on the bow, and Elisha put his hands on the king’s hands. 17“Open the east window,” said Elisha. So he opened it and Elisha said, “Shoot!” So he shot. And Elisha declared: “This is the LORD’s arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Aram, for you shall strike the Arameans in Aphek until you have put an end to them.” 18Then Elisha said, “Take the arrows!” So he took them, and Elisha said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground!” So he struck the ground three times and stopped.… More on the Arrow of Deliverance
William Dyce FRSE RSA RA (19 September 1806 in Aberdeen – 14 February 1864) was a Scottish painter, who played a part in the formation of public art education in the United Kingdom, and the South Kensington Schools system. Dyce was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and played a part in their early popularity
William Dyce, R.A., H.R.S.A.
Neptune Resigning to Britannia the Empire of the Sea, c. 1847
a scheme for a fresco at Osborne House
Oil on paper laid down on board
Private collection
This was Dyce’s only exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1847. It was described in the catalogue as ‘Sketch for a picture to be painted at Osborne House for Her Majesty and H.R.H. Prince Albert’.
The finished wall painting, completed in the same year, measures seventeen feet wide by ten feet high and differs only in small details from the present work. On 13 January 1847, following a lunch with the Queen and Prince, Dyce told his fellow artist Charles West Cope that his design had been well-received; ‘Prince thought it rather nude; the Queen, however, said not at all.’ This remark demonstrates Queen Victoria’s lack of coyness in her artistic tastes. The dozen towering nudes, including the God of the Oceans Neptune and his cohort Amphitrite, accompanied by tritons and sea-nymphs, a putto and centaur, delighted the Queen but Dyce reported that ‘The nursery maids and French governesses have been sadly scandalised by the nudities.’ More on this painting
Bacchus Nursed by the Nymphs of Nyssa, c.1827
Oil on board
H 30.8 x W 40.5 cm
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums
This oil depicts a dynamic, bucolic revel, much in the style of the great Bacchanals of Titian.
The myth centres on the god Bacchus, the son of Jupiter and the mortal, Semele, who was reared by the nymphs of Nyssa. In the central group Silenus, a satyr-god, squeezes grape juice into a cup, whilst Bacchus, kneeling on a young goat and tended by one of the nymphs, raises his arm to reach for the drinking vessel. More on this painting
After studying at Marischal College, Dyce early showed an aptitude for design and began his artistic career at the Royal Academy schools in Edinburgh and London. He travelled to Rome for the first time in 1825, and while there he studied the works of Titian and Poussin. He returned to Aberdeen after nine months, and painted several pictures, including Bacchus nursed by the Nymphs of Nysa (See above), which was exhibited in 1827. 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, who admired Dyce's Virgin and Child (See below). After these travels, Dyce 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.
William Dyce (1806–1864)
Virgin and Child
Oil on plaster
H 78.7 x W 60.3 cm
Nottingham City Museums & Galleries
A study of the Virgin Mary facing right, holding Jesus in her right arm, and reading a small red book in her right hand. She wears her light brown hair braided at the back, and has on a red round-necked dress with large sleeves edged in green, with a blue cloak that has slipped to waist level. The child is naked except for a band of white material slung over his left shoulder. The background is a rocky landscape. More on this painting
William Dyce (1806–1864)
The Virgin and Child, c. 1845
Oil on canvas
Height: 81 cm (31.8 in); Width: 58 cm (22.8 in)
Windsor Castle
The influence of Raphael is clearly evident in this painting, which bears a similarity to works such as The Small Cowper Madonna (Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art). The resemblance was noted by Queen Victoria who described the painting on first seeing it in Buckingham Palace as ‘quite like an old master, & in the style of Raphael – so chaste & exquisitely painted’ (Journal, 9 August, 1845).
While the pose here is tender, the focus is more on religious devotion than maternal affection, the spiritual rather than the sensual. The Virgin reads a Bible passage referring to the stock of Jesse (Isaiah 11) and the child points to Mary as the origin of Christ. The picture was hung in the Queen’s Bedroom at Osborne House. The Queen herself made a pastel copy of it , and in 1846 the Prince commissioned from Dyce a companion picture, St Joseph, which he considered even finer (See below). More on this painting
WILLIAM DYCE (1806-64)
Saint Joseph Signed and dated 1847
Oil on canvas
78.9 x 54.8 x 2.3 cm
Queen's Bedroom, Osborne House
After acquiring The Madonna and Child (See above) Prince Albert commissioned this painting of St Joseph, and the two pictures were hung together in the Queen's Bedroom at Osborne House. The works were inspired by early Italian art, being painted on white grounds and with somewhat severe profile views, and they contain hints of the lowland Scottish scenery that would become more prominent in Dyce's later biblical pictures. Commissioned by Prince Albert.
After the artist had made some alterations to the head, giving it more hair and a longer beard, Prince Albert was apparently very pleased with this painting. It was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1855, and placed in the Queen’s Bedroom at Osborne. Inscribed on the back with the subject, the artist’s name and the date, 1847. More on this painting
There exists an earlier painting (possibly dating from 1838) of the same subject in the Tate Gallery, London, and a variant of the present design in the Castle Museum, Nottingham.
William Dyce (1806–1864)
The Woman of Samaria, c.1850–1864
Oil on panel
H 34.2 x W 48.4 cm
Birmingham Museums Trust
Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.. Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink', you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water." More on the Samaritan woman
Lamentation over the Dead Christ, c. 1835
Oil on canvas
H 210 x W 165 cm
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums
The Lamentation of Christ is a very common subject in Christian art from the High Middle Ages to the Baroque. After Jesus was crucified, his body was removed from the cross and his friends mourned over his body. This event has been depicted by many different artists.
Lamentation works are very often included in cycles of the Life of Christ, and also form the subject of many individual works. One specific type of Lamentation depicts only Jesus' mother Mary cradling his body. These are known as Pietà (Italian for "pity"). More The Lamentation of Christ
William Dyce (1806–1864)
The Daughters of Jethro Defended by Moses, c. 1829
Oil on canvas
H 73.7 x W 123.7 cm
Perth & Kinross Council
While wandering in exile from Egypt, Moses happened to stumble upon Jethro's seven daughters attempting to draw water out of a well to water their father's sheep.
Unfortunately, some shepherds were preventing them from doing their chores, blocking access to the well while they selfishly watered their own sheep. Moses defended the daughters, driving back the bothersome shepherds and chivalrously watering the sheep himself.
Out of gratitude, Jethro gave Moses his prettiest daughter in marriage. More on The Daughters of Jethro Defended by Moses
The Meeting of Jacob and Rachel, c. 1850
Oil on canvas
H 70.5 x W 91 cm
Leicester Museum & Art Gallery
The Meeting of Jacob and Rachel illustrates the Biblical text 'Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept. The moment represented is that when Jacob falls in love with his cousin Rachel whom he had encountered standing at a well with her father's flocks and who was beautiful and well-favoured. The urgency of his emotion, and her demure acceptance of his love, is poignantly conveyed by the way in which he leans forward to look directly into her face, resting his hand on the nape of her neck and pressing hers to his chest, while she stands before him without recoiling or resisting him, only looking downwards in a gesture of modest acceptance of his adoring attention.
Rachel's father, Laban was to trick Jacob into working for him for fourteen years without payment, on the understanding that he would eventually be able to marry Rachel, and then insisted that Jacob should first marry Rachel's elder sister, Leah, before eventually allowing Rachel to be his wife. More on this painting
William Dyce (1806–1864)
Saint Catherine, c.1840
Oil on panel
H 88.9 x W 64.8 cm
National Galleries of Scotland, Scottish National Gallery
Saint Catherine of Alexandria is, according to tradition, a Christian saint and virgin, who was martyred in the early 4th century at the hands of the pagan emperor Maxentius. According to her hagiography, she was both a princess and a noted scholar, who became a Christian around the age of fourteen, and converted hundreds of people to Christianity. She was martyred around the age of 18. Over 1,100 years following her martyrdom, St. Joan of Arc identified Catherine as one of the Saints who appeared to her and counselled her.
The emperor condemned Catherine to death on a spiked breaking wheel, but, at her touch, it shattered. Maxentius ordered her to be beheaded. Catherine herself ordered the execution to commence. A milk-like substance rather than blood flowed from her neck.
The Eastern Orthodox Church venerates her as a Great Martyr, and celebrates her feast day on 24 or 25 November (depending on the local tradition). In the Catholic Church she is traditionally revered as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. In 1969 the Catholic Church removed her feast day from the General Roman Calendar; however, she continued to be commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on 25 November. More on Saint Catherine of Alexandria
In 1837 Dyce 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. 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.
Circle William Dyce
Two girls playing musical instruments
Oil on canvas
60 x 50cm
Private collection
From the same collection at the Partridge sale was an unsigned Pre-Raphaelite style painting of two girls playing musical instruments. It was in fact a copied detail from John William Waterhouse’s St Cecilia, the two figures appearing in the bottom left of the 1895 painting.
This 2ft x 20in (60 x 50cm) oil on canvas here, showing one girl playing the lute and the other the violin, was catalogued as ‘Circle of William Dyce (1806-64)’. More on this painting
William Dyce (1806–1864)
The Highland Ferryman, c. 1858
Oil on canvas
50.8 × 61 cm (20 × 24 in)
Private collection
William Dyce (1806–1864)
Welsh Landscape with Two Ladies Knitting
Oil on board
36 x 58 cms | 14 x 22 3/4 ins
National Museum of Wales
The painting is a romanticised Victorian view of ‘wild Wales’ and its ‘unspoilt’ people. It is a scene that the artist has composed, not observed. The younger woman is dressed in the recently revived Welsh national costume, in reality worn only on special occasions. Both are knitting stockings from scavenged scraps of wool, even though this was an occupation for the home, and one that had largely disappeared by 1860. It is full of contrived contrasts - between age and beauty, and between transitory humans and ancient geological formations - while the sickle moon suggests the cyclical progression of the universe. More on this painting
William Dyce
Henry VI at Towton, c. 1860
Oil on panel
37 x 51 cm
Guildhall Art Gallery, London.
The Battle of Towton on 29th March 1461 was possibly the largest and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil.
Although the Lancastrian King Henry VI had transferred the right of succession to the English throne to Richard, Duke of York and his heirs, his wife Queen Margaret was not prepared to accept an arrangement that deprived her son of his birthright without a fight.
England was effectively a country with two kings, a predicament that could only be settled on the battlefield.
The two huge armies, estimated at between 50,000 – 65,000 men, confronted each other in the middle of a snowstorm on an open field between the villages of Towton and Saxton, in North Yorkshire on Palm Sunday. More on The Battle of Towton
In 1844, having been appointed professor of fine art in King's College London, he delivered a significant lecture, The Theory of the Fine Arts. In 1835 he had been elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy, an honour he relinquished upon settling in London, and he was then made an honorary member. In 1844 he became an associate, and in 1848 a full member, of the London Royal Academy of Arts; he also was elected a member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
William Dyce (1806–1864)
Piety: The Knights of the Round Table about to Depart in Quest of the Holy Grail, c. 1849
Watercolour and bodycolour over pencil on buff paper, laid down
23.3 x 44 cm
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
Dyce also engaged in the popular Victorian sub-genre of Arthurian legend. This watercolour uses the hatching more commonly found in illustration and prints, and was the study for a fresco for the Queen’s Robing Room in the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament).
It shows a melée of knights of the Round Table paying tribute to King Arthur and Queen Guinevere (at the right), as those knights prepare to depart on their quest for the Holy Grail, the legendary chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper. More on Piety
William Dyce (1806–1864)
Mercy - Sir Gawaine swearing to be merciful and 'never be against Ladies
Fresco
Palace of Westminster
Sir Gawaine represents the knightly virtue of Mercy in a strange tale in which he fought a knight who had killed Sir Gawaine's hounds, after they had slain that knight's white hart.
'Why have you slain my hounds?' said Sir Gawaine. 'For they did but their kind.' And he smote the knight so hard that he fell to the earth, and then he cried mercy and besought him as he were a knight and a gentleman to save his life. Sir Gawaine would no mercy have, but unlaced his helm to have stricken off his head. Right so came his lady out of a chamber and fell on him, and so he smote her head off by misadventure.
Gawaine returned to Camelot with the lady's body on his horse, and her head hung about his neck.
And there by ordnance of the queen it was judged upon Sir Gawaine for ever after he should be with all ladies, and fight their quarrels, and that he should never refuse mercy to him that asketh mercy. Thus was Gawaine sworn upon the four Evangelists. More on this painting
William Dyce (1806–1864)
Generosity: King Arthur Unhorsed, Spared by Sir Launcelot, c. 1852
Fresco
11'2½" x 5'10"
Palace at Westminster, London
An episode from near the end of Morte d'Arthur is included to exemplify knightly Generosity. After Arthur learned that Guenever and Launcelot were lovers, he made war against Launcelot's castle of Joyous Guard. In a battle Arthur was thrown from his horse by Sir Bors, Launcelot's kinsman. Here we see the King lying at the feet of Sir Bors, at the mercy of this knight.
And so Sir Bors drew his sword and said to Sir Launcelot: 'Shall I make an end of this war?' and that he meant to have slain king Arthur. 'Not so hardy,' said Sir Launcelot, 'For I will never see that most noble king, that made me knight, neither slain nor shamed.' And therewithal Sir Launcelot alighted off his horse, and took up the king, and horsed him again. More on Generosity
Dyce died in Streatham in Surrey on 14 February 1864. He is buried in the churchyard of St Leonards Church in Streatham. He is also memorialised on his parent's grave in St Nicholas Churchyard on Union Street in Aberdeen, and there is a street in Streatham named for him – William Dyce Mews. A stained glass window in St Machar's Cathedral is jointly dedicated to Dyce. More on William Dyce
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