A Reverie. Sir Frank Dicksee (18). 1895. Oil on canvas. H 106 x W 138.5 cm. Collection: Walker Art Gallery. Accession no. WAG 2280, purchased in 1895. Image credit: Walker Art Gallery. Reproduced via Art UK under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC).
The painting illustrates lines from a poem by Louisa Stevenson: "In the years that have fled/ Lips that are dead/ Sang me that song," which were quoted in the Academy Exhibition Catalogue. Set in an elegant, lamp-lit drawing room one evening after dinner, a wife, seated at the piano, plays an air which reminds her brooding husband of another woman whom he had once loved. Using a photograph, Dicksee painted himself as the husband and posed Mary as the wispy spectre who now appears to him, unseen by his wife. A reviewer quoted in The Artist of June 1895 considered the apparition "an excellent ghost indeed." — Angela Bolger
Bibliography
Bolger, Angela. "Mary Lloyd - The Face of an Angel, Part III." Victorian Web. Web. 25 September 2024.
"Frank Dicksee, R.A." The Artist Vol. 16 (June 1895), n.p. Google Books. Free ebook.
A Reverie. Art UK. Web. 25 September 2024.
Toll, Simon. Frank Dicksee, 1853-1928: His Art and Life. Woodbridge, Suffolk: ACC Artbooks, 2016.
Created 25 September 2024