Edwin Walter Dickinson

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Dickinson, Edwin (1891–1978). American painter and draughtsman, born in Seneca Falls, New York. His training included periods at the Art Students League, New York, and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris. From 1920 to 1944 he lived at Cape Cod, then moved to New York, where he taught at various art schools. He often treated enigmatic or disquieting subject-matter and he has been described as ‘perhaps the first American artist about whom some knowledge of dream theory is essential for decoding his works’ ( Matthew Baigell, A Concise History of American Painting and Sculpture, 1984). His personal symbolism is seen at its most disturbing and provocative in his self-portraits, in which he sometimes painted himself as dead. He is best known, however, for large compositions such as The Fossil Hunters (Whitney Museum, New york, 1926–8). Dickinson often worked on his big pictures for a number of years and said that they were never ‘really finished'. From 1959 he visited Greece several times, producing delicate pencil drawings of classical ruins. He has been called a Surrealist and has also been seen as a sophisticated culmination of the 19th-century Romantic tradition.

Edwin Walter Dickinson 1891–1978, American painter, b. Seneca Falls, N.Y. He studied in New York City with William Merritt Chase , and spent most of his life on Cape Cod. Working during the modernist era, Dickinson went his own way with paintings in several styles and genres. The dark, dreamlike, quasisurrealist, obsessively reworked, and often monumental paintings he called "symbolical" portray figures and objects in complex spatial and psychological interrelationships caught in a mysterious flickering light. Among these are The Cello Player (1924–26; San Francisco Mus.), The Fossil Hunters (1926–28; Whitney Mus., N.Y.C.), and the unfinished Ruin at Daphne (1943–53; Metropolitan Mus., N.Y.C.). He also painted many haunting self-portraits. His quickly painted "premier coup" landscapes, first painted in the mid-1920s and usually small and almost abstract, capture light and atmosphere with an informed spontaneity. A skilled draftsman, Dickinson also created many superb drawings.

Bibliography: See studies by L. Goodrich (1965), J. Shannon (1980), D. Dreishpoon et al. (2002), and J. L. Ward (2003).

Dickinson, Edwin (b Seneca Falls, NY, 11 Oct. 1891; d Cape Cod, Mass., 2 Dec. 1978). American painter and draughtsman. He often treated enigmatic or disquieting subject matter and he has been described as ‘perhaps the first American artist about whom some knowledge of dream theory is essential for decoding his works’ ( Matthew Baigell, A Concise History of American Painting and Sculpture, 1984). His personal symbolism is seen at its most disturbing and provocative in his self-portraits, in which he sometimes depicted himself as dead. He is best known, however, for large compositions such as The Fossil Hunters (1926–8, Whitney Mus., New York). Dickinson often worked on his big pictures for a number of years and said that they were never ‘really finished’. He has been called a Surrealist and also seen as a sophisticated culmination of the 19th-century Romantic tradition.

Dickinson, Edwin (1891–1978). American painter and draughtsman. He often treated enigmatic or disquieting subject matter and he has been described as ‘perhaps the first American artist about whom some knowledge of dream theory is essential for decoding his works’ (Matthew Baigell, A Concise History of American Painting and Sculpture, 1984). His personal symbolism is seen at its most disturbing and provocative in his self-portraits, in which he sometimes depicted himself as dead. He is best known, however, for large compositions such as The Fossil Hunters (1926–8, Whitney Mus., New York). Dickinson often worked on his big pictures for a number of years and said that they were never ‘really finished’. He has been called a Surrealist and also seen as a sophisticated culmination of the 19th-century Romantic tradition.