Thomas Francis Dicksee
1818–1895 · British painter of historical genre subjects and portraits
Thomas Francis Dicksee (born London, 13 December 1819; died London, 6 November 1895) was a British painter, a portraitist best known for historical genre subjects, many drawn from Shakespeare. A pupil of H. P. Briggs, he exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1841 until the year of his death.
Dicksee specialised in idealised portraits of Shakespearean heroines such as Ophelia, Beatrice, Miranda and Ariel, though he also painted family portraits and figures from history such as Cleopatra. His works include Juliet on the Balcony (1875), now in the McManus Galleries in Dundee, and an Ophelia of 1864 in the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum. His Anne Page of 1862 is held by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.
He belonged to an artistic family. His brother John Robert Dicksee was also a painter, and his son Sir Frank Dicksee served as president of the Royal Academy from 1924 until his death. His daughter Margaret Isabel worked in a more sentimental vein. His legacy lies chiefly in his images of literary heroines, which shaped how many Victorian viewers pictured Shakespeare's women.