“The Magic Crystal” by Frank Dicksee A.R.A.

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The Magic Crystal

Sir Frank Dicksee, 1853–1928

1894

Oil on canvas

H 168.5 x W 102 cm

Collection: Lady Lever Art Gallery, Wirral

Accession no. LL3622

Transferred from Lord Lever's private collection, 1922

Image credit: Lady Lever Art Gallery. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Released by the gallery on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC)

The sumptuously robed figure, a sorceress, it seems, holds a crystal up to the light and examines it carefully. The fine, almost translucent material of her dress glitters in arsenic-dyed green and blood-red tones, her lips and nails are painted red, and she wears heavy reddish-brown beads in two rows round her neck. Over her intricately carved throne-like chair is thrown a patterned brocade, predominantly red, while the curtain draped to the left is also patterned, again with more green than anything. On the other side, green leaves hang down. There is little relief from the overwhelming sense of dark, mysterious power. [Commentary continues below.]

Image download, commentary and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee.

In a review of the 1894 exhibition in the Academy, Claude Phillips admired the various effects of the painting, and the pains taken to achieve them — but only up to a point. "[T]he strenuous endeavour to attain to ideality of conception, with the aid of well-ordered design and beautiful colours, is very apparent," wrote the critic; but the artist was deemed to have fallen short in the evocation of the flesh, and also in imbuing the work with a "vivifying spark ... the power to infuse some personal charm and distinctiveness into the glittering hollow shell so faultlessly fashioned" (400).

Angela Bolger explains that the dress was one lent to Dicksee by society hostess, and wife of the Huntley and Palmer biscuits magnate, Lady Jean Palmer, describing it in more detail as not so much green as "transparent peacock-coloured ... over a pink under-dress," with "heavily sequined sleeves" and a pink "girdle and yoke" to match the under-dress. It was worn here by the artist's model, Mary Lloyd, who had already sat for Dicksee's friend, Frederic Leighton, several times.

Phillips concludes by comparing The Magic Crystal unfavourably with J. W. Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott, shown in the same year, saying, "mark how true imagination differs from the well-meant striving after it" (400), and since the Waterhouse painting is so much better known than Dicksee's, time seems to have proved him right.

Bibliography

Bolger, Angela. "Mary Lloyd - The Face of an Angel, Part II." Victorian Web. Web. 25 September 2024.

The Magic Crystal. Art UK. Web. 25 September 2024.

Phillips, Claude. "Fine Art. The Royal Academy. I." The Academy. Vol. 45. No. 1159. 399-400. Internet Archive. Web. 25 September 2024

Created 25 September 2024