Dickinson Brothers

Joseph Dickinson (1780-1849) was a stationer, print-seller and art dealer who had a business at 114 New Bond Street. Joseph and his wife Ann Rowden Carter’s three sons, William Robert (1815-1887), Lowes Cato (1819-1908) and Gilbert Bell (1825-1908) followed him in to business. In 1854 following the withdrawal of the patent restrictions on photography the Dickinson Brothers began including photography as part of their thriving portrait painting and engraving business. They soon realised that taking a photograph and using that as a basis for a portrait in oils reduced the time that sitters needed to spend in the studio and aided the artist. Lowes was the main artist in the family, having studied in Italy and having his own studio in Portland Place in the early 1850s, but the company employed other artists, including Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893). Lowes seems to have known many of the artists in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and have introduced Brown to the company.

In 1858 the seem to have been tempted to Scarborough by the rise in the resort’s popularity with the gentry. for two years they operated their own studio, presumably taking photographs and producing painted portraits from them that would be sent on to the sitters. After spending two seasons with studios operated on their own account they decided to set up in partnership with Scarborough’s premier photographer, Oliver Sarony at his new studio in Sarony Square. Presumably Sarony, the businessman, was aware that competition from a fashionable London photographer and portrait painter was not good for his business. This partnership lasted for three seasons before ending in 1862 when the Dickinson Brothers opened their Brighton Studio. They briefly returned to Scarborough in 1868 when they described themselves as “portrait painters to her Majesty”.