Background
Dickinson, Sidney Edward was born on November 28, 1890 in Wallingford, Connecticut, United States. Son of Charles Henry and Mary Lord (Thorn) Dickinson.
Dickinson, Sidney Edward was born on November 28, 1890 in Wallingford, Connecticut, United States. Son of Charles Henry and Mary Lord (Thorn) Dickinson.
Dickinson studied with George Bridgman and William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League of New York from 1910 to 1911, and from 1910 to 1912 he was a pupil of Douglas Volk at the school of the National Academy of Design.
He spent time traveling around the country doing manual labor, working in lumber camps and finding employment as a surveyor"s roadman and farmhand. Dickinson first exhibited with the National Academy in 1915, hanging a self-portrait at that year"s winter show. He served on the Academy Council from 1930 until 1933.
Dickinson was active as an instructor for many years, teaching at the Art Students League in 1919–1920 and heading a life class at the National Academy from 1928 to 1931 and again from 1939 to 1943.
In the summers of 1943 and 1944 he returned to the League to teach, and became a regular faculty member there in 1949, retiring in 1973. Pupils included Albert Wasserman, James Rosenquist, Richard Pionk, and Robert Neffson.
Dickinson kept a studio in Carnegie Hall until retiring to Windsor, Vermont, where he would die, in the later 1970s. A self-portrait is part of the Academy"s permanent collection, as are portraits of Mary Gray, George Wharton Edwards, Harry Wilson Watrous, Georg J. Lober, Frederick K. Detwiller, Donald De Lue, Ernest Nathaniel Townsend, John Carroll, Theodore East. Blake, Otto R. Eggers, Robert South. Hutchins, Bryant Baker, and Edgar I. Williams.
Another portrait of Baker, donated by the subject, is owned by the National Portrait Gallery, while a portrait of photographer Paul Juley is part of the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Other portraits are owned by the Figge Art Museum, Harvard University, Princeton University, the United States Department of State, and the University of Iowa. Dickinson also painted many figurative works throughout his career. A number of these were born of his experiences in Alabama, and are owned by the Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina.
Dickinson"s grandson Charles is also a painter.
American Academy of Arts and Letters]
He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1931. Other portraits include a notable set depicting members of the Rockefeller family, the official mayoral portrait of Fiorello LaGuardia, and a portrait of Governor Thomas East. Kilby of Alabama.
Married Mary Watson, August 1, 1928. Children: Thorn Watson, Nathaniel Rogers.