Evangeline Dickson; Artist and illustrator
Hyfler/Rosner
Evangeline Dickson
Artist and illustrator
16 June 2004
Evangeline Mary Lambart Sladen, artist; born Sheffield
31 August 1922; married 1949 John Wanless Dickson (died
2001; one son, two daughters); died Wirksworth, Derbyshire
21 May 2004.
When she was nearly 40 the artist Evangeline Dickson went to
live in Suffolk, the county of Thomas Gainsborough, John
Constable and Alfred Munnings. The move changed her life. At
last she was able to pursue a career in art, and with her
highly individual work, mostly in her preferred medium of
watercolour, she became part of the long tradition of East
Anglian painters.
Dickson was born Evangeline Sladen in 1922, in Sheffield, of
Salvation Army parents. Her great-grandfather was General
William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, and she
herself was named after her formidable great-aunt Evangeline
Booth. Her parents' duties frequently took them away from
home so she was sent as a child to boarding school in Devon.
She got to know its hills and moors and wild places - it was
a love that lasted all her life and the British landscape
and its history were to be key themes in her work. Separated
from the influence of her parents, Evangeline was also
released from the more strident elements of the Salvation
Army. From now on she was a member of the Church of England.
On leaving school she worked as a nurse and then as a
teacher. With her blue eyes and permed blonde hair she was a
remarkably beautiful young woman - although she was covered
with chicken pox when she first met her husband, John
Wanless Dickson, who was a medical student and a friend of
her brother. They married in 1949. He became an orthopaedic
surgeon, and in 1960 with their young family they moved to
Westerfield near Ipswich in Suffolk. Because of her strong
allergy to dust, they built a new house for themselves which
was considered healthier, if less picturesque, than an old
one.
The new house was constructed with a studio, for Dickson now
felt able to follow her passion for painting. Although she
did not attend a school of art she studied with two local
artists, Violet Garrod, the painter and miniaturist, and
Anna Airy, who was both a watercolourist and etcher,
particularly of plants and flowers. Airy - who had herself
trained under Wilson Steer - had a forceful character but
Dickson had been used to strong women all her life and they
became close friends.
During the course of her life as an artist Dickson was to
have a prodigious output; always willing to experiment, she
worked in a wide variety of styles which reflected the wide
range of subjects which inspired her. These varied from
cotton grasses and wild flowers to farm wagons and
prehistoric monuments.
For her exhibition "Ancient Places" held at the Salisbury
and South Wiltshire Museum in 1992 she painted the stone
circles at Stonehenge and Avebury as well as the White Horse
at Uffington. But she had other interests too and Dickson's
strong social conscience took her down to London to draw the
down-and-outs of "cardboard city" as another project.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, although she charged very little for
her work, these pictures did not sell particularly well.
Commissioned work included illustrations for the Collins
Guide to the Grasses, Sedges, Rushes and Ferns of Britain
and Northern Europe (1984) and for Lee Chadwick's In Search
of Heathland (1982).
Dickson exhibited throughout Suffolk as well as with both
the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Institute of
Painters in Watercolour and at the Paris Salon. She was a
founder member of the British Watercolour Society and for
some time Chairman of the Ipswich Art Society. Examples of
her work can be found in art galleries in Sheffield and
Ipswich and in private collections worldwide.
Wildlife conservation became another of her causes and for
many years she helped voluntarily with the Suffolk Wildlife
Trust; she was also a warden to the Monewden Nature Reserve,
where she helped with the nurturing of the orchids and
fritillaries. She strongly opposed the construction of the
Sizewell B nuclear power station.
Kind and considerate, gently independent and clear as to
what she was and wanted, she endeared herself to many. In
the last years of her life, however, she suffered from
Alzheimer's disease and she and her husband moved to live
with their daughter at Wirksworth in Derbyshire. As the
disease progressed so, ultimately, she lost all sense of the
propriety which had been her legacy from the Salvation Army.
A large exhibition of Evangeline Dickson's work was held at
Woodbridge in Suffolk in September 2003.
Simon Fenwick