William Dyce

William Dyce (1806-1864) was a Scottish painter, who played a part in the formation of public art education in the United Kingdom, and the South Kensington Schools system. Dyce was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and played a part in their early popularity.

Dyce was born on 19 September 1806 at 48 Marischal Street in Aberdeen, the son of William Dyce of Fonthill and Cuttlehill FRSE and Margaret Chalmers of Westburn. His uncle was General Alexander Dyce FRSE. His older brother was Robert Dyce FRSE.

After studying at Marischal College, Dyce early showed an aptitude for design and began his artistic career at the Royal Academy schools in Edinburgh and London. He travelled to Rome for the first time in 1825, and while there he studied the works of Titian and Poussin. He returned to Aberdeen after nine months, and painted several pictures, including Bacchus nursed by the Nymphs of Nysa, which was exhibited in 1827. He returned to Rome in 1827, this time staying for a year and a half, and during this period he appears to have made the acquaintance of the German Nazarene painter Friedrich Overbeck, who admired Dyce's Virgin and Child. After these travels, Dyce settled for several years in Edinburgh. He supported himself by painting portraits at first, but soon took to other subjects of art, especially the religious subjects he preferred.

In 1837 Dyce was given charge of the School of Design in Edinburgh, and was then invited to London, where he was based thereafter, to head the newly established Government School of Design, later to become the Royal College of Art. Before taking up this post in 1838 he and a colleague were sent to visit France and Germany to enquire into design education there and prepare a report. He left the school in 1843, to be able to paint more, but remained a member of the Council of the school. The ideas that were turned in the following decade into the "South Kensington system" that dominated English art education for the rest of the century have their origin in Dyce's work.

In 1849 when the new 'godless' florin coins were introduced by the Royal Mint, Dyce was responsible for the reverse design showing crowned cruciform shields bisected with emblems of the rose, thistle and shamrock in the angles. He also took on the similar design used on the reverse of the later Queen Victoria 'gothic head' florins which were issued from 1851 to 1887.

Dyce's most highly thought of painting today is his exceptionally detailed seaside landscape of Pegwell Bay in Kent, now in the Tate Gallery. A rather atypical work, it is fully titled Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th 1858, and was exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1860. The largest collection of Dyce's work is held at Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland.

Dyce is the figure in Scottish art most associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. He befriended the young Pre-Raphaelites in London and introduced their work to the influential art critic John Ruskin. His later work was Pre-Raphaelite in its spirituality, as can be seen in his The Man of Sorrows and David in the Wilderness (both 1860), which contain a Pre-Raphaelite attention to detail.