3-016-766 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late W. Dyce, Esq.. R.A., 1864. Engraving from a photograph by John and Charles Watkins of a painter '...whose laborious and anxious life was terminated by a painful internal disease...The time will... come when William Dyce will be named among England's greatest ornaments. We write this with a full conviction of its truth, derived from a day spent in careful examination of those great frescoes in the Palace of Westminster - the ill-paid labour of many years - which will perpetuate the name and fame of Dyce to future generations...We have it from authority which cannot be disputed that the censures for supposed neglect and procrastination in the execution of the frescoes at Westminster, passed upon the painter by dilettanti M.P.s and in the reports of the Parliamentary Commission on the Fine Arts, acting upon a highly sensitive nature, very perceptibly aggravated the malady which hurried Dyce into an untimely grave...Latterly, the artist had been very assiduously working on the largest fresco [in the Queen's Robing-room], though constantly suffering from ill-health and mental anxiety. One day, however, he fairly broke down...he went home, and a little time after he died, making, we fear, one more of England's martyrs to "high art".' From "Illustrated London News", 1864.