Sir Frank Dicksee was born in 1853 to an artistic family: His father Thomas Dicksee was a painter and etcher, and brother of Margaret Dicksee.
Throughout the 1880s and 1890s he painted historical, literary, biblical and allegorical subjects in a lavishly-costumed and richly colored style that earned him great success and popularity. Although he was not a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a number of his paintings are very Pre-Raphaelite in subject matter and in technique. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1876, becoming successively ARA (1881), RA (1891) and finally President of the Royal Academy in 1924. He died in 1928.
