Sidney Dickinson

{{Short description|American painter (1890–1980)}}

File:George E. Stratemeyer DF-SC-83-08839.jpeg, oil on canvas, currently owned by the United States Department of Defense]]

Sidney (sometimes Sydney) Edward Dickinson (November 28, 1890 – April, 1980) was an American painter.

Dickinson was born in Wallingford, Connecticut, and was the son of a Congregationalist minister, Charles H. Dickinson. His parents moved frequently; from 1894 to 1901 the family lived in Canandaigua, New York, and they spent time in Fargo, North Dakota and Calhoun, Alabama,{{cite book|author1=David Bernard Dearinger|author2=National Academy of Design (U.S.)|title=Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design: 1826–1925|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PHH45aYubp4C&pg=PR20|year=2004|publisher=Hudson Hills|isbn=978-1-55595-029-3}} where they assisted his aunt, Charlotte Thorn, in the running of the Calhoun Colored School.{{cite web|url=http://www.gcma.org/pages/see/exhibitions/default/0/41|title=Greenville County Museum of Art|accessdate=3 May 2015}}

Dickinson studied with George Bridgman and William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League of New York from 1910 to 1911, and from 1910 to 1912 he was a pupil of Douglas Volk at the school of the National Academy of Design. He spent time traveling around the country doing manual labor, working in lumber camps and finding employment as a surveyor's roadman and farmhand.

Dickinson first exhibited with the National Academy in 1915, hanging a self-portrait at that year's winter show. He received a Julius Hallgarten Prize on the occasion of his third show with the organization, in 1917, and continued to exhibit there for nearly fifty years. He earned another Hallgarten Prize in 1924; the Isaac N. Maynard Prize in 1933 and 1938; the Benjamin Altman Prize in 1936; and the Andrew Carnegie Prize in 1942. He served on the Academy Council from 1930 until 1933. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1931.{{cite web|url=http://www.artsandletters.org/academicians2_deceased.php|title=A|work=artsandletters.org|accessdate=3 May 2015|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110726004624/http://www.artsandletters.org/academicians2_deceased.php|archivedate=26 July 2011}}

Dickinson was active as an instructor for many years, teaching at the Art Students League in 1919–1920 and heading a life class at the National Academy from 1928 to 1931 and again from 1939 to 1943. In the summers of 1943 and 1944 he returned to the League to teach, and became a regular faculty member there in 1949, retiring in 1973. Pupils included Albert Wasserman,{{cite web|url=http://alliedartistsofamerica.org/albert-wasserman/|title=Albert Wasserman|work=Allied Artists of America|accessdate=3 May 2015}} James Rosenquist,{{cite book|author1=James Rosenquist|author2=David Dalton|title=Painting Below Zero|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uDzKOqBT2vsC&pg=PA33|date=27 October 2009|publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-307-27329-1|pages=33–}} Richard Pionk,{{cite web|url=https://www.gearygallery.com/?exhibitions=february-richard-pionk-master-pastelist|title=February Exhibit at the Geary Gallery in Darien, CT - GearyGallery.com|work=gearygallery.com|accessdate=3 May 2015}} and Robert Neffson.{{cite web|url=http://www.askart.com/artist/Robert_Neffson/105968/Robert_Neffson.aspx|title=Robert Neffson|work=askart.com|accessdate=3 May 2015}}

File:The Black Cape by Sidney E. Dickinson.jpg

Dickinson was a prolific portraitist; among the artists whose portraits he showed at the Academy are Paul Arndt, Robert Aitken, Louis Bosa, Eugene Higgins, Hobart Nichols, Raphael Soyer, and his second cousin Edwin Dickinson. He also produced notable portraits of members of the Rockefeller family, the official mayoral portrait of Fiorello LaGuardia, and Governor Thomas E. Kilby of Alabama.{{cite web|url=http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/3aa/3aa296.htm|title=Sidney Edward Dickinson: Alabama Suite|publisher=Tfaoi.com|accessdate=17 June 2016}}

A self-portrait by Dickinson is part of the National Academy's permanent collection, along with portraits of Mary Gray, George Wharton Edwards, Harry Wilson Watrous, Georg J. Lober, Frederick K. Detwiller, Donald De Lue, Ernest Nathaniel Townsend, John Wesley Carroll, Theodore E. Blake, Otto R. Eggers, Robert S. Hutchins, Bryant Baker, and Edgar I. Williams.

Other works by Dickinson are held in the collections of the Figge Art Museum,{{cite web|url=http://figgeartmuseum.org/getdoc/059fd16f-b000-4a59-a91b-03ba8c656352/D.aspx?Page=2|title=Figge Art Museum – D|work=figgeartmuseum.org|accessdate=3 May 2015}} Harvard University,{{cite web|url=http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/304902?position=0|title=From the Harvard Art Museums' collections James Bryant Conant (1893–1978)|author=Harvard|work=harvardartmuseums.org|accessdate=3 May 2015}}{{cite web|url=http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/304948?position=1|title=From the Harvard Art Museums' collections Alfred Leroy Johnson (1881–1967)|author=Harvard|work=harvardartmuseums.org|accessdate=3 May 2015}} Princeton University,{{cite web|url=http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/maker/5616|title=Sidney Edward Dickinson – Princeton University Art Museum|work=princeton.edu|accessdate=3 May 2015}} the United States Department of State,{{cite book|author=United States. Dept. of State|title=Department of State publication: Department and foreign service series|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UDMXAQAAMAAJ|year=1978|publisher=Department of State}} and the University of Iowa.{{cite web|url=http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm/search/collection/uima/searchterm/Dickinson,%20Sidney/field/all/mode/exact/conn/and/cosuppress/|title=University of Iowa Museum of Art Digital Collection|work=uiowa.edu|accessdate=3 May 2015}} Dickinson also painted many figurative works throughout his career; a number of these were born of his experiences in Alabama, and are owned by the Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina.

He was noted for working in wet-on-wet style, and composed many of his works directly in the studio, often completing a portrait during a single three- or four-hour sitting.{{cite web|url=http://www.charlestonrenaissancegallery.com/pages/art/artists/artistsinventorydetail/1/492&description=Full|title=Charleston Renaissance Gallery|accessdate=3 May 2015}} Dickinson kept a studio in Carnegie Hall until retiring to Windsor, Vermont, where he would die, in the later 1970s.

His children were wildlife biologist Nate Dickinson and mechanical engineer Thorn Watson Dickinson. Dickinson's grandson Charles Dickinson is also a painter.{{cite web|url=http://charlesdickinson.net/bio.php|title=Charles Dickinson – Fine Art|work=charlesdickinson.net|accessdate=3 May 2015}}