The Lawn at Goodwood

Lowes Cato Dickinson was a British portrait painter who worked in the mid-to-late Victorian tradition — his subjects drawn from the British professional, academic, and artistic worlds. His 'The Lawn at Goodwood' (1886) is a departure from his usual portrait practice into the territory of social genre — Goodwood being the celebrated Sussex racecourse and country estate where the summer race meetings were among the most fashionable events of the English social season. The lawn at Goodwood offered a subject combining fashionable figures, social spectacle, and the specific quality of the English summer day.

Dickinson renders the Goodwood lawn scene with attention to the fashionable gathering — the figures in summer dress, the social interactions of the race meeting's social occasion, and the quality of English summer light on the lawn and the assembled company creating the genre subject's content. His handling of the outdoor light and the figures' fashionable dress reflects his academic training adapted to the specific requirements of the social genre subject.