Edwin Dickinson - Girl On Tennis Court

A medium-sized painting from imagination with uncharacteristic general use of relatively saturated color, Girl on Tennis Court, 1926, has received little written discussion. It represents a young woman striding boldly forward through patches of shadow that fall across her body and seem to menace her from below. The pose is similar to that of the Nike of Samothrace (with the legs reversed), which he had seen in the Louvre six year earlier and done a drawing of. In 1949 Dickinson tried including the Nike in his Ruin at Daphne (but changed it to a column fragment), and bought a reproduction of the sculpture. Ward notes that Dickinson first describes the picture he is beginning as "comp. of Sheldrake tennis ct" and believes that the inspiration for the painting may have been his sight of a girl at that location, moving in a pose that recalled his memory of the ancient Nike.