Dickinson, Edwin Walter definition of Dickinson, Edwin Walter in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Dickinson, Edwin Walter, 1891–1978, American painter, b. Seneca Falls, N.Y. He studied in New York City with William Merritt Chase Chase, William Merritt, 1849–1916, American painter, b. Williamsburg, Ind., studied in Indianapolis and in Munich under Piloty. In 1878 he began his long career as an influential teacher at the Art Students League of New York and later established his own
..... Click the link for more information. , and spent most of his life on Cape Cod. Working during the modernist era, Dickinson went his own way with paintings in several styles and genres. The dark, dreamlike, quasisurrealist, obsessively reworked, and often monumental paintings he called "symbolical" portray figures and objects in complex spatial and psychological interrelationships caught in a mysterious flickering light. Among these are The Cello Player (1924–26; San Francisco Mus.), The Fossil Hunters (1926–28; Whitney Mus., N.Y.C.), and the unfinished Ruin at Daphne (1943–53; Metropolitan Mus., N.Y.C.). He also painted many haunting self-portraits. His quickly painted "premier coup" landscapes, first painted in the mid-1920s and usually small and almost abstract, capture light and atmosphere with an informed spontaneity. A skilled draftsman, Dickinson also created many superb drawings.

Bibliography

See studies by L. Goodrich (1965), J. Shannon (1980), D. Dreishpoon et al. (2002), and J. L. Ward (2003).