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Edwin Walter Dickinson

American, 1891 - 1978

Death-PlaceProvincetown, RI

Birth-PlaceSeneca Falls, NY

BiographyEdwin Walter Dickinson (October 11, 1891 – December 2, 1978) was an American painter and draftsman best known for psychologically charged self-portraits, quickly painted landscapes, which he called premier coups, and large, hauntingly enigmatic paintings involving figures and objects painted from observation, in which he invested his greatest time and concern. His drawings are also widely admired and were the subject of the first book published on his work.[1] Less well known are his premier coup portraits and nudes, his medium-sized paintings done entirely from imagination or incorporating elements from one of his drawings or done from observation over several days or weeks, including still lifes, portraits of others, both commissioned and not, and nudes. Dickinson was born and raised in Seneca Falls, New York, in the Finger Lakes area; his family moved to Buffalo in 1897. The death of his mother from tuberculosis in 1903, the suicide in 1913 of his older brother, Burgess, his father's remarriage in 1914 to a much younger woman, and the death of a close friend in combat have all been cited as influences on the themes of his later work.[12] As a boy Dickinson had assumed he would become a minister, like his father, but his brother's suggestion of a career in the navy proved more to his liking. Unfortunately, he failed the entrance exam of the U.S. Naval Academy twice.[13] In 1911 he enrolled at the Art Students League, where he studied under William Merritt Chase. In the summers of 1912 and 1913 he stayed in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he studied with Charles W. Hawthorne, and continued there year round from 1913 to the summer of 1916, working as Hawthorne's assistant in 1914.[13] From late summer 1916 through year's end Dickinson investigated the possibilities of printmaking in Provincetown with fellow painter Ross Moffett, and made further attempts in the '20s and '30s, but felt his time was better spent painting.[14] Dickinson remained active as a teacher into the 1960s, by which time his painting output had sharply diminished following the removal of a tubercular lung in 1959 and the increased demands imposed by his growing reputation. These included participation in numerous one-person and group shows, the most important of which were a large retrospective of his work in Boston in 1959,[47] another in New York in 1961[48] that included 157 works and was reviewed by thirteen critics,[49] followed by an exhibition of his work organized by the Museum of Modern Art that traveled to twelve venues in eleven states,[50] another retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1965, covered by nine critics,[51] and inclusion in the American exhibition at the 34th Venice Biennale, where he was the featured painter.[52] Various honors, awards, interviews, and lecture requests followed.[53] There is no record of his having painted after 1963. By 1970 he was displaying symptoms indicative of Alzheimer's Disease and died in Provincetown on December 1, 1978.[54]

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