Preston Dickinson

William Preston Dickinson (September 9, 1889 – November 25, 1930) was an American modern artist, best known for his paintings of industrial subjects in the Precisionist style.

William Preston Dickinson was born on September 9, 1889 in New York City, a third-generation American in a working-class family. His father was an amateur painter who made a living as a calligrapher and interior decorator; he died when Preston was only eleven years old. By 1906, his family had relocated to Suffern, New York.

Dickinson studied between 1906 and 1910 at the Art Students League of New York under William Merritt Chase, as well as under Ernest Lawson. His tuition at the art school was paid by philanthropist and art patron Henry Barbey. Barbey and art dealer Charles Daniel also financed Dickinson's trip to Europe. From 1910 to 1914, he lived in Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian and École des Beaux-Arts, and exhibited his work at the Paris Salon and the Salon des Indépendants.

After the start of World War I, Dickinson returned to the U.S. in September 1914. Lacking resources, he moved in with his mother, widowed sister and her son in the Bronx. He shortly participated in several group exhibitions at the Daniel Gallery, ultimately receiving his first solo gallery show there in 1923. He spent the summer of 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska, where he produced a series of drawings of the Peters Mills granaries and factory complex. He lived in Quebec from 1925 to 1926, where he painted landscapes and street scenes. By the end of the 1920s, he had established a reputation as an important American modernist and his works had entered public and private collections.

In June 1930, Dickinson moved to Spain with friend and fellow painter Oronzo Gasparo, looking for a cheap place to live and paint. Dickinson's money ran out by that autumn, but before he could leave Spain he was hospitalized with double pneumonia. He died three days later, on November 25, 1930, in Irun, Spain, and was buried there. He had long been in poor health, suffering from alcoholism among other conditions.

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