American Art Collaborative

Dickinson, a native of Connecticut, was largely known as a teacher and portrait painter. In 1910­1911 he studied at the prestigious Art Students League in New York, where he took portrait and still life painting with William Merritt Chase and figure drawing with George Bridgman. After a short interlude in Alabama, he settled in Manhattan. He taught at the Art Students League, first in 1919, and then from 1949 until 1973. His mainstay was portraiture, and his sitters included John D. Rockefeller, Samuel Kress, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and Governor Thomas Kilby of Alabama. His philosophy was simple: "I never start a portrait with a preconceived idea about the sitter. I feel so much may be revealed in a face. A banker: why a banker may have the quality of a poet." http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/3aa/3aa296.htm