Herbert Dicksee 'The Destroyers' Tigers On The Escarpment

Herbert Dicksee
'The Destroyers', tigers on the escarpment
etching by by Herbert Thomas Dicksee, published September 1st 1904 by Frost & Reed, London. Framed in the original oak frame. A good clean etching with great definition to the image depicting these powerful creatures crouching, ready to pounce. The oak frame is in very good order, the etching has been removed from the frame, the glass cleaned and reframed, it is supplied with a new hanging wire and ready for the wall.

62cm H, 91cm W (the frame)

Herbert Thomas Dicksee (14 June 1862 – 20 February 1942) was an English painter who specialised in oil paintings of dogs, particularly the deerhound. Prints and etchings of his best-known paintings were widely distributed and his work is popular among collectors and dog enthusiasts today.

Dicksee belonged to an illustrious artistic family. His father was the artist John Dicksee (1817–1905). John's brother Thomas (1819–1895), also a painter, was the father of Sir Frank Dicksee (1853–1928), president of the Royal Academy from 1924 until his death. (Herbert, meanwhile, had one sister, whose name was Amy.) Dicksee studied art at the Slade School, London, on a scholarship. His first painting was exhibited in 1881.

Dicksee lived in London, Fitzroy Square, a short walk from the London Zoological Gardens, the world’s oldest scientific zoo, at Regent’s Park. It was here that Dicksee discovered a passion for capturing the power and majesty of the lions, tigers and big cats that inhabited the gardens.

Ironically, Dicksee never travelled to Africa, or the Far East, which is remarkable given the accuracy and authenticity of his works. Instead, he enlisted the help of London’s zookeepers to persuade the animals to adopt the natural poses he needed to stimulate ideas for pictures.

According to a 1906 article in the monthly Windsor Magazine, Herbert would “...rise at 6 o`clock in the morning to visit the Zoological Gardens before visitors could arrive and obstruct his view. There he would be seen, morning after morning, making sketches of the lions and tigers in the reposeful intervals of their restless movements."

Consequently, Dicksee emerged as one of the leading wild animal painters of Edwardian Britain and one of the first generation of artists to create majestic, accurate, and energetic images of lions, leopards, and tigers. As a reward for his frequent visits and faithful renditions, Herbert was made a Fellow of London Zoo

Herbert Dicksee died in 1942 in Hampstead. His daughter Dorothy was the executor of his will, which directed her to destroy most of the plates for Dicksee's etchings, thereby making these remaining etchings all the more important.