Oil paint on canvas
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Chantrey Bequest
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sir-frank-dicksee-149" aria-label="More by Sir Frank Dicksee" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Sir Frank Dicksee</a>
Harmony
Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1877
adults
architecture
domestic
features
fine arts and music
instrument, organ
interiors
lifestyle and culture
music room
musical analogy
objects
people
society
window, stained glass
woman
<p>As an art student, Dicksee joined a sketching club that met regularly to make drawings on an agreed theme. One evening, their topic was ‘Music’. Harmony is based on the original sketch Dicksee made that night, and also uses his experience of designing stained glass windows. It was huge success when it was exhibited in 1877.</p><p>The model for the woman playing the organ was Hilda Spencer, a student at Queens College, where Dicksee taught drawing. Art historians have debated whether Spencer is shown as a passive object of desire, or a powerful figure and accomplished musician in her own right.</p><p><em>Gallery label, August 2018</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
18 October 2019 – 27 September 2020
2020-09-27
18 October 2019 – 1 February 2020
2020-02-01
2019-10-18
Southampton City Art Gallery (Southampton, UK)
http://www.southampton.gov.uk/leisure/arts
21 February 2020 – 27 September 2020
2020-09-27
2020-02-21
Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum (Bournemouth, UK)
2019-10-18
Beyond Brotherhood: The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy
Loan-out
1 May 2022 – 12 February 2023
2023-02-12
1 May 2022 – 30 September 2022
2022-09-30
2022-05-01
Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum (Leamington Spa, UK)
4 October 2022 – 12 February 2023
2023-02-12
2022-10-04
Watts Gallery - Artists’ Village (Compton, UK)
http://www.wattsgallery.org.uk
2022-05-01
Modern Pre-Raphaelites Visionaries
Loan-out
Harmony
support: 1575 × 940 mm

Presented by the Trustees of the <a href="/search?gid=999999977" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Chantrey Bequest</a> 1877
<p>Shortly after Dicksee was granted a studentship to enter the Royal Academy Schools, he joined the Langham Sketching Club. One evening the set subject was 'Music'. Encouraged with the sketch he had made Dicksee decided to make a repetition of it in oil. In 1877, when he was only 24 years old, the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> was exhibited at the Royal Academy with the new title <i>Harmony</i>. 

</p><p><i>Harmony </i>is one of the most well known pictures by Dicksee, depicting a young man staring adoringly into the eyes of a girl playing the organ. The model for the woman was Hilda Spencer who was then a student at Queens College, Harley Street where Dicksee taught <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a>. She sits in a trance like state, seemingly oblivious to her suitor's rapturous gaze. The painted furniture is reminiscent of the medieval <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/f/figurative-art" title="Glossary definition for 'Figurative'"><span>figurative</span></a> <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/panel" title="Glossary definition for 'Panel'"><span>panels</span></a> then being produced by William Burges (1827-81) and William Morris (1834-96). In addition the stained glass reflects the influence of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/pre-raphaelite" title="Glossary definition for 'Pre-Raphaelite'"><span>Pre-Raphaelitism</span></a> and, in particular, Henry Holiday (1839-1927). Holiday was introduced to the applied arts by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82) and Burges. In 1863 he began his career as a painter of stained glass, employing Dicksee for some years to make cartoons and research costumes and characters in the British Library.

</p><p>In recent years an interest in the formal qualities of <i>Harmony</i> has been overshadowed by a burgeoning interest in the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/i/iconography" title="Glossary definition for 'Iconography'"><span>iconography</span></a> of the painting. Kestner remarks that Dicksee suggests 'an intricate series of harmonies, beginning with that between the dominant man and objectified woman The youth's contemplation endows him with authority, connoted by the gold band on the fourth finger of his left hand, as the enforcer of the myth of domesticity which constrained women' (Kestner, p.87). Kestner takes Dicksee's later self-confessed admiration for Mussolini as indicating his belief in male empowerment over women. Marsh has also suggested constructions of nineteenth-century patriarchy in <i>Harmony </i>centred around the Madonna stained glass which, she believes, is a motif for the devoted mother and wife. The subject of the painting, Marsh argues, is 'the harmonious qualities of true wifehood' (Marsh, p.74). These readings of <i>Harmony, </i>however, overlook the submissive pose of the male suitor who leans on his elbow, starring in awe, rather than in contempt, at the woman.

</p><p>The picture proved immensely popular when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy having been given a central position in the first room by the hanging committee. The critic of the <i>Art Journal </i>remarked:<i> </i>'Another young painter, who has taken not so much a stride as a spring forward is FRANK DICKSEE'. Voted 'Picture of the Year', <i>Harmony</i> was bought by the Chantrey Bequest for the nation for the large sum of £367 10s (Dibdin, p.4).

</p><p><b>Further reading:<br/></b>Gail-Nina Anderson and Joanne Wright, <i>Heaven on Earth: The Religion of Beauty in Late Victorian Art, </i>exhibition catalogue, Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham 1994, p.74, reproduced in colour, p.67<br/>Rimbault Dibdin, <i>Frank Dicksee His Life and Work, </i>London 1905, pp.4-6<br/>Joseph A Kestner, 'The Male Gaze in the Art of Frank Dicksee', <i>Annals of Scholarship, </i>volume 7, number 2, 1990, pp.187-8<br/>Jan Marsh, <i>Pre-Raphaelite Women, </i>London 1987, p.74

</p><p>Heather Birchall<br/>May 2002<br/></p>
Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>As an art student, Dicksee joined a sketching club that met regularly to make drawings on an agreed theme. One evening, their topic was ‘Music’. Harmony is based on the original sketch Dicksee made that night, and also uses his experience of designing stained glass windows. It was huge success when it was exhibited in 1877.</p>
<p>The model for the woman playing the organ was Hilda Spencer, a student at Queens College, where Dicksee taught drawing. Art historians have debated whether Spencer is shown as a passive object of desire, or a powerful figure and accomplished musician in her own right.</p>
</div>

Display caption
2018-08-03T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><b>N01587</b> HARMONY 1877
<br/> 
<br/>Inscr. ‘Frank Dicksee 1877’ b.l.
<br/>Canvas, arched top, 62×37 (157·5×94).
<br/>Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1877.
<br/><i>Exh:</i>
R.A., 1877 (14); <i>Late Members</i>, R.A., winter 1933 (178).
<br/><i>Lit:</i>
Sydney Hodges, ‘Mr Frank Dicksee, A.R.A.’ in <i>Magazine of Art,</i>
1887, p.218, repr. p.220; E. T. Cook, <i>A Popular Handbook to the Tate Gallery</i>, 1898, p.208; E. Rimbault Dibdin, ‘Frank Dicksee’ in <i>The Art Annual</i>, 1905, p.4, repr. p.3.
<br/><i>Engr.</i>C. A. Waltner 1880.</p>
<p>When Dicksee was a student he joined the Langham Sketching Club and one of the subjects set there for a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a> was ‘Music’. Dicksee treated it in the medieval manner made fashionable by the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/pre-raphaelite" title="Glossary definition for 'Pre-Raphaelite'"><span>Pre-Raphaelites</span></a>. He had worked under Holiday making cartoons for stained-glass windows and introduced one in the background. This sketch he subsequently worked up into ‘Harmony’. The picture was an immediate success. It was given a centre position in the first room at the R.A. and was purchased by the Chantrey Bequest Trustees in the first year of their activity. E. T. Cook, <i>loc. cit.,</i> writes: ‘The picture suggests indefinite associations with all beautiful <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/abstract-art" title="Glossary definition for 'Abstract art'"><span>abstractions</span></a> whether of music, poetry or <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a>. Music is the type of the harmony between the man and the woman - the two notes in the human chord. Above the girl at the organ is a window, storied with a picture of that divine love of which earthly love, as the poets tell us, is the imperfect shadow.’</p>
<p><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, <i>The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture</i>, London 1964, I</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-09-23T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
adults architecture domestic features fine arts and music instrument, organ interiors lifestyle and culture musical analogy music room objects people society window, stained glass woman