“The imagination of man is naturally sublime, delighted with whatever is remote and extraordinary.”
David Hume, 1748
‘Sunset on the Nile’ by Frank Dillon
Image courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
For centuries the term “Orientalism” was used to describe the anthropological study of foreign civilizations by European scholars, however, over the past half century it has unfortunately become associated with racial stereotyping and colonial oppression. Meanwhile, Orientalist art has been enjoying a sustained period of popularity as the number of specialist sales at the major auction houses in London and New York confirms. But uncertainty about what may or may not constitute culturally inappropriate language means it may not be long before Sotheby’s and Christie’s are holding these sales without even mentioning the O-word in case it offends the wrong person and attracts bad publicity. Not only would this be a pity, but a decision based upon misunderstanding and misrepresentation.
To imply – as numerous modern critics (and not just Edward Said) in essence have – that “Orientalist” means “racist” is a mistake. Of course, all language is fluid and context and connotation can change over time, but in this case the true meaning of the word lies in its original definition and not in some postmodern (presentist) interpretation. And surely the lesson of history tells us not to get too worked-up about words. So, before we start burning the books of Jane Austen for writing sympathetic characters who live off the profits of slavery, we should instead acknowledge that one cannot judge the language of history, like the precepts of the past, by the standards of today.
‘Playthings’ by Ernest Normand, 1886
Image courtesy of Sotheby’s, London
It is also worth pointing out that, ironically, many authors of Orientalist works helped conserve cultural treasures of foreign countries that would otherwise have been lost due to the indifference and inaction of native populations. We have only to recall the recent tragic destruction of the ancient sites of Aleppo in Syria to be reminded that locals are not always as appreciative of their own cultural heritage as foreigners.
However, as a title, I certainly would not argue that the word “Orientalism” is inappropriate but only in that to modern ears it sounds so inexact (a more suitable moniker might be “Exoticism” in that it describes the interest in, and passion for, what is unfamiliar and exciting), but then up until the turn of the 20th century “the Orient” was still thought of as anywhere south of Rome or east of Venice and consequently any Western European painting that depicted Moorish Spain and what was once the Ottoman Empire – North Africa, Southeast Europe and the Middle East – was therefore described as “Orientalist”.
Although closely associated with French artists such as Jean-Léon Gérôme and others of the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français many of Orientalism’s most authentic figural works were painted by Austrian, German, and British artists; the Nubian guards and Cairo carpet sellers of Ludwig Deutsch and John Frederick Lewis (and the more risqué odaliques of Ernest Normand) being some of the best. These character-driven subject pictures (or “genre scenes”) may represent most people’s idea of Orientalist art, yet many of the period’s finest paintings contain few figures whose only purpose is to provide scale and a dash of human interest. Celebrating both the exotic splendour of the region and the architectural achievements of its ancient peoples these are the epic topographical views of the Orientalist landscape painters.
‘Sandstorm approaching the Sphinx at Giza, Sunset’ by David Roberts, 1849
Image of Louis Haghe’s lithograph courtesy of the Wellcome Collection, London
The distinguished Scottish artist David Roberts RA (1796-1864) afforded many British eyes their first glimpse of the Mediterranean back in the 1830s with his epic watercolours (and subsequent lithographic prints) of Southern Spain and the Levant. But it was his dramatic images of the Sphinx and Pyramids that really caught the public’s attention during what was then the first wave of “Egyptomania”. Following David Roberts as Britain’s foremost painters of Orientalist landscapes were Edward Daniell (1804-1842), William James Müller (1812-1845), Edward Lear (1812–1888), Thomas Seddon (1821-1856), Frederick Goodall (1822-1904), and Frank Dillon (1823-1909). The latter was not only an important Orientalist painter but one of the era’s most passionate campaigners for the preservation of Egypt’s ancient cultural heritage.
‘The Tombs of the Sultans’ by Frank Dillon
Now available to purchase from Academy Fine Paintings
As a boy Frank Dillon was a product of the influential Bruce Castle School in North London. Under the headmastership of the innovative Victorian educator Rowland Hill (1795-1879) the school set out to equip each boy with the knowledge and skills (and ethics) needed to become the best version of themselves or, as they put it back then, to be “most useful to society and most happy to himself”. Hill’s Humanist approach to personal and social education emphasised the importance of morality and generosity whilst the curriculum focused on modern languages instead of Latin and upon science and engineering rather than Bible study and the Classics. Charles Dickens called Bruse Castle School “The only recognition of education as a broad system of moral and intellectual philosophy that I have ever seen in practice.”
Intent upon a career as an artist Frank Dillon entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1845 and supplemented his tuition by becoming a private pupil of one of England’s most eminent topographical painters of exotic Mediterranean views, James Holland (1799-1870). In addition to being a painter of promise the young Frank Dillon was also a budding explorer and enthusiastic antiquarian, so his choice of tutor was an appropriate one. Bearing in mind his talent and artistic proclivities he would also have made an ideal pupil of the Academy of Fine Arts in Dusseldorf, the alma mater of so many of the century’s finest view painters.
Following his marriage in 1847, Dillon’s growing reputation enabled him and his wife Josephine to embark on a year-long trip to Portugal and Madeira; a working tour sponsored by the explorer and politicican Robert Grosvenor, the future Baron Ebury. Dillon’s watercolours of the island were published as a set of fine lithographs in 1850, in which year he also made his exhibition debut in London with oil paintings of Lisbon and Madeira, respectively.
‘The Praça do Comércio and the Cais das Colunas, Lisbon’ by Frank Dillon
Image courtesy of Woolley & Wallis
In 1854 Frank Dillon made his first trip to Egypt, an experience that would have a profound effect on both his life and career. By this time the Dillon’s had a young son and daughter, so the artist made the long and arduous trip alone leaving his young family back in London, albeit with a large support network; Josephine Dillon’s sister and widowed mother were now in residence and the household employed a fulltime domestic staff of five.
Setting out from his base in Cairo, Frank Dillon followed the course of the Nile to the Great Pyramid and Sphinx at Giza, up river to the tombs of Beni Hasan, to Dendera, and Karnak and the Valley of the Kings at Thebes, and on to his final destination; the island of Philea, site of the Temple of Isis. The sketches he made along the way formed the basis of important works painted back in London and subsequently exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institution over the next six years.
Perhaps the most famous result of Dillon’s first period in Egypt is his painting ‘The Colossi of Thebes’ which depicts the ancient stone monoliths of the pharaoh Amenhotep III that still stand today outside what is now the city of Luxor. In its review of the 1857 British Institution Exhibition the Art Journal declared the picture achieved “one of the most poetic effects in the whole academy” and should be “classed among the most admirable of modern work”.
‘The Colossi of Thebes’ by Frank Dillon, 1856
Image courtesy of St. Louis Art Museum
As I have already mentioned, Frank Dillon’s family upbringing and schooling produced a beneficent individual with a keen interest in world events. Upon his return to England his growing engagement with political and social issues led to a friendship with the Italian journalist and campaigner Giuseppe Mazzini, then living in exile in London. Mazzini’s democratic republican views and advocacy for universal access to education (particularly women’s education) and a fair deal for indigenous peoples had made him some powerful enemies with the absolutist regime back in Italy but many supporters in England and elsewhere. Their friendship makes it likely that the artist also made the acquaintance of another important figure in Italy’s unification, Mazzini’s colleague, Guiseppe Garibaldi during his visits to London in the 1860s and no doubt both men attended the banquet in honour of Garibaldi organised by Dillon’s patron Baron Ebury.
It was during this period that Dillon’s wife Josephine became ill and passed away aged just thirty-eight. Naturally feeling that a change of situation might benefit his young son and daughter he moved his family to Upper Phillimore Gardens in West London. Here, in what was then the artistically sympathetic environment of Kensington, Dillon set up home (as a single parent and bachelor, he never remarried) and the studio in which he would paint some of his most important pictures.
One of Dillon’s fellow students back at the Royal Academy Schools had been the influential designer and colour theorist Owen Jones and the two friends shared an interest in, and passion for, Moorish design. Dillon’s studio at Phillimore Gardens was a both a workspace and a museum; decorated in “the Arabian style” it contained many of the artifacts he would collect (and save from decay) during his four trips to Egypt. Interestingly, the design of Dillon’s studio predates the more famous “Arab Hall” established at the Holland Park home of Sir Frederic Leighton (1830-1896). Whether the latter took direct inspiration from the former is not known but I feel sure that Frank Dillon’s enthusiasm for all things Egyptian (and his richly decorated Arab Studio) did help motivate his near neighbour Augustus Lane Fox (better known today as the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers) to make his celebrated visit to Egypt in 1881.
Frank Dillon’s “Arab Studio” in Kensington & ‘The Harem of Sheikh Sadat, Cairo’, 1870 by Frank Dillon
Image of courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
In 1861 Frank Dillon embarked on a second trip to Egypt. His travelling companion was his friend George Price Boyce (1826-1898) who was also a significant painter of topographical landscapes similar, in their precise execution and vivid colouring, to those of William Holman Hunt and Andrew MacCallum. By this time Dillon had become a passionate advocate for the preservation of the ancient monuments of Egypt and in particular the island of Philae where he had painted the Temple of Isis, Trajan’s Kiosk, and sunset views of the River Nile.
In addition to the many oil paintings he was now exhibiting annually at the major London venues Dillon was also a fine watercolourist and in 1865 – with friends Edward John Poynter and Simeon Solomon – he became a founder member of the Dudley Gallery whose home was the unique and eccentric Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. The first entire building in England to be designed in “the Egyptian style” the exterior featured a madcap capriccio of Sphinxes, scarab beetles, hieroglyphs, palmiform columns, winged mundi, and Coade stone statues of Isis and Osiris (which are today reduced to guarding a lift at London’s hideous Barbican complex). The Dudley Gallery styled itself as a serious-minded society and its exhibitions (of watercolours only) were aimed at connoisseurs and collectors rather than the Society crowd who flocked to the Royal Academy across the road at the start of every London Season. Its arabesque decor certainly made it an apposite venue for the exhibition of Frank Dillon’s Egyptian pictures. Following the closure of the Dudley Gallery in 1882 the artist was elected a member of the Institute of Painters in Water-colour.
The Egyptian Hall, 1880 and Frank Dillon with the members of the Royal Institute, 1883
The man who was already England’s most travelled artist of the century made the long sea voyage to Japan in 1875 accompanied by his son, the twenty-five-year-old art historian, Edward Dillon. After two centuries of isolation Japan had only recently reopened its ports to Western visitors and Frank Dillon’s beautifully executed and subtly coloured paintings of this most unfamiliar land would later give many people back in Britain their first glimpse of the country. Three years later Frank and Edward Dillon (who became Britain’s foremost authority on Japanese culture) were instrumental in the staging of the ‘Exhibition of Japanese & Chinese Works of Art’ held at the Burlington Arts Club in London. Frank Dillon’s introductory article to the catalogue reveals he was no less knowledgeable about the art and antiquities of Japan than he was those of Ancient Egypt, and very much confirms him as a deeply respectful admirer of, rather than casual exploiter of, foreign peoples…
“The use of landscape, as applied to decorative purposes, prevailed in Japan at a period when this branch of art was hardly recognized in Europe. The love of natural scenery has always been a marked characteristic of the Japanese people… and there are few features in their national character more attractive to the traveller than the eagerness with which all classes watch the changing seasons, and dwell with delight upon the opening buds of spring, or the varied hues of autumn foliage, both of which their artists delight in depicting.”
‘The Stray Shuttlecock’ by Frank Dillon, 1878
Image of courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Nevertheless, it was his enduring fascination with Egypt that led the artist to become a key figure in the formation of the ‘Society for the Preservation of the Monuments of Ancient Egypt’ in 1888; at that time the only organisation concerned with the conservation rather than excavation of the ancient sites of Philae and Giza. By enlisting the support of eminent colleagues – such as Edward John Poynter, Henry Wallis, Sir Frederic Leighton, George Frederic Watts, and William Holman-Hunt – Frank Dillon was able to gather public and governmental support for the campaign to protect and preserve these iconic structures, and all this more than half a century before UNESCO even existed.
‘The Tombs of the Sultans’ by Frank Dillon, 1873
Exhibited in London at the Royal Academy in 1873 Frank Dillon’s ‘Tombs of the Sultans’ is one of the artist’s finest large-scale views of Old Cairo and is now available to purchase. The painting, which depicts the ancient City of the Dead at dusk, can be viewed on our Gallery page.
Between 1850 and 1907 Frank Dillon exhibited forty-nine paintings at the Royal Academy, thirty-four at the British Institution, and at many others at venues including the Royal Scottish Academy, the New Watercolour Society, the Grosvenor Gallery, the Dudley Gallery, the Royal Society of British Artists, and the Victorian Era Exhibition at Earl’s Court in 1897. Today, paintings by Frank Dillon can be found in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Royal Academy Collection, Guildhall Art Gallery, the Royal Collection, the British Government Art Collection, and the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Centre for British Art.
by Gavin Claxton
© Academy Fine Paintings Ltd 2025