William Dyce

William Dyce brought a clear, cool, almost hard light to British painting, with sharp outlines and carefully drawn detail. Much of his work is religious, and he was one of the first in Britain to take up the early Italian masters that the Pre-Raphaelites later championed.

He was born in Aberdeen in 1806, studied in Edinburgh and London, and made trips to Rome in the 1820s, where he met the German Nazarene painters. He painted frescoes of the Arthurian legend for the Palace of Westminster, and his best known picture, Pegwell Bay, Kent, a Recollection of October 5th 1858, hangs in Tate Britain. Aberdeen Art Gallery holds the largest collection of his work. He died in 1864.

Francesca da Rimini, from Dante, shows his neat, linear style applied to a romantic subject.