World War I and European Trip
Dickinson spent time teaching painting in Buffalo and working as a telegrapher in New York City until his naval service from late 1917 to 1919. War had interrupted Dickinson's plans to visit Europe with his close friend and fellow painter, Herbert Groesbeck, and while Dickinson served in the navy off the coast of New England Herbert traveled to Europe as a soldier and died in the Argonne Forest in one of the last battles of the war. His death seemed to reawaken Dickinson's pain over earlier losses of his mother and brother and to affect subsequent paintings. A trip to Paris to study art followed between December 1919 and July 1920, financed by a gift from Groesbeck's widow and parents of the insurance money paid on his death. Dickinson made a side trip to visit his grave in northern France and then to Spain; two paintings by El Greco in Toledo he declared the best he had ever seen, an admiration that persisted throughout his life. The subject of one was especially meaningful to Dickinson, having visited Groesbeck's grave so recently, The Burial of Count Orgaz.
Read more about this topic: Edwin Dickinson
Famous quotes containing the words world, war, european and/or trip:
“A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate”
—Christopher Hampton (b. 1946)
“We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“I can never suppose this country so far lost to all ideas of self-importance as to be willing to grant America independence; if that could ever be adopted I shall despair of this country being ever preserved from a state of inferiority and consequently falling into a very low class among the European States.”
—George III (1738–1820)
“Harvey, Jr.: Say, Dad. Suppose you could lend me fifty for the trip home?
Harvey: I hate these emotional farewells.”
—Tom Waldman (d. 1985)