Dicksee Paintings
1853 - 1929 Painter, Illustrator, England, Victorian Romanticism
The Mirror, 1896
Oil on canvas, 37.52 x 46.5 inches [95.3 x 118.1 cm]
Private collection Figurative Art
Frank Dicksee, again, is at his very best - in the brilliant piece of decoration called The Mirror. What it means, this very intense lady, with the dark hair gazing at herself in a classical hand-mirror, scarcely appears, nor does it much matter; it is enough that she is comely and that she is clothed in the most wonderful draperies and seated in by far the most wonderful chair that are to be found in the whole Academy. In what chateau of the Renaissance , in what museum, in what Aladdins palace, did Dicksee find that chair of chased steel and mother-of-pearl? If in none, if he evolved it out of his own consciousness , it does him infinite credit as a designer, while in point of execution he has certainly never equalled the painting of this or the soft and myriad-hued in which his princess has robed herself.
