DEATH OF PRESIDENT OF ROYAL ACADEMY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18644, 22 December 1928, Page 12

DEATH OF PRESIDENT OF ROYAL ACADEMY.

(Special to. the “ Star.’b LONDON, October IS. Sir Frank Dicksee, President of the Royal Academy, died yesterday morning at a Maida Yale nursing home at the age of seventy-four. Almost on the eve of his seventyfifth birthday, which he would have celebrated next month, his death occurs at a time when the question of his successor is being keenly discussed in art circles. The attainment to the age of seventy-five meant that he would automatically cease to be President. It is regarded as almost certain that Sir William Llewellyn, the portrait painter, will be the new President. His claims were warmly supported by Sir Frank Dicksee. Sir Frank was the son of a famous artistic family. Ilis father, the late Mr Thomas Dicksee, who illustrated .Shakespeare and Scott, had exhibited at the Royal Academy every year for nearly half a century,’ when Sir Frank was elected an R.A. in 1891. Sir Frank won a studentship at the Royal Academy Schools at nineteen, and exhibited his first picture, “Elijah confronting Aliab and Jezebel in Naboth’s Vineyard” at Burlington House at the age of twenty-three. The following year he sprang to fame with “Harmony,” the acknowledged picture of the year, which was bought by the Academy under the Chantrey Bequest. At twenty-seven he was elected an A.R.A. and at thirty-seven was a full Royal Academician—honours which few men attain before forty. He was elected President in 1924 in succession to Sir Aston Webb. Copies of his romantic and allegorical studies found their way into countless homes, and are still to be found there. Sir Frank, while ready to recognise what was best in modern art, had no sympathy with eccentricity or freakishness.