Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/288

 sometimes sung at the Royal Academy banquets. He founded the Motett Society, for the study and practice of the church music of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, and in 1842–3 he published, in two quarto volumes, ‘The Book of Common Prayer with the ancient Canto Fermo set to it at the Reformation,’ with two dissertations on that kind of music. For this he received the Prussian gold medal of science and art from the king of Prussia, who was then interested in framing a liturgy for his national state church. Dyce published numerous pamphlets on art and other subjects, among them being one entitled ‘Shepherds and Sheep,’ in answer to Mr. Ruskin's ‘Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds.’ In 1853 he published a pamphlet on the National Gallery. His administrative abilities were highly thought of, and he drew up a set of statutes for Dulwich College. In 1851 he was appointed a juror of the Great Exhibition, and published a report on ‘iron and general hardware;’ in 1862 he was again a juror of the International Exhibition appointed to judge on ‘stained glass and glass used in building and decoration.’ This was a subject to which Dyce had given great attention. His mastery of it was shown in his cartoon for the memorial window to the Duke of Northumberland in St. Paul's Church, Alnwick, and in the so-called choristers' window in Ely Cathedral. In these Dyce carried out theories of his own in colour and execution; nothing was left to the discretion of the workmen, as the artist had already thought out every detail. He often employed himself in architectural designs. Dyce also designed the florin which is now in use, and was originally intended for a four-shilling piece. He declined to stand for the presidency of the Royal Academy on the death of Sir Martin Shee; he always took a prominent part in the deliberations of that body, and it was on his proposal that the class of retired academicians was established. He was also a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. His works were rather those of a learned student than an original artist, and were marked by a refinement of taste, rather than by any appeal to the feelings of the spectator. Some of his pictures are in the Scottish National Gallery at Edinburgh. Twelve of his later paintings were exhibited at Manchester in 1887, but were inadequate examples of his art. Some of his studies are at the South Kensington Museum and at Owens College, Manchester. During his residence in Edinburgh he etched the illustrations to Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's ‘The Morayshire Floods’ (published 1830), and ‘Highland Rambles’ (published 1837). In all his manifold accomplishments he attained a high degree of proficiency. At the Royal Academy dinner of 1864 Mr. Gladstone, speaking of Dyce's recent death, said he believed that the very ideal of the profession of an artist had rarely been more honourably exhibited than in Dyce's character.

[Information from Mr. J. Stirling Dyce, F.S.A.; Memoir by J. Dafforne in the Art Journal for 1860; Encycl. Brit. (9th ed.); Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Redgraves' Century of Painters.]  DYCE-SOMBRE, DAVID OCHTERLONY (1808–1851), an eccentric character, was born at Sirdhana, Bengal, in 1808. His great-grandfather, Walter Reinhard, a native of Strasburg, a carpenter by trade, went to India in 1754, where he became a soldier in the service of several of the native princes, and acquired from the sombre cast of his countenance the nickname of Sombre. In 1777 the emperor of Delhi gave him the principality of Sirdhana, which on his death at Agra, 4 May 1778, passed to his widow Zerbonissa, a dancing girl, who became begum of Sirdhana. By a concubine Reinhard left a son, Aloysius Reinhard, otherwise known as Zuffer Yah Khan. This son died, leaving a daughter Juliana, who married George Alexander Dyce, commandant of the begum's forces. A son by this marriage was D. O. Dyce. He was brought up in the house of the Begum Sombre, and educated by Mr. Fisher, the church of England chaplain at Meerut, but on attaining manhood joined the church of Rome. On 27 Jan. 1836 the begum died, and DYCE inherited from her upwards of half a million sterling, which was paid over to him from the Anglo-Indian exchequer, where it had been deposited, and he then took the additional surname of Sombre. Previously to this he had been created by the pope a chevalier of the order of Christ, in consideration of some very large gifts which the begum had made to his holiness. In October 1836 he left Sirdhana, to which he never returned. In 1837 he went to China, coming back to Calcutta in February 1838. He then embarked for England, and landed at Bristol in August of that year. His arrival attracted much notice, as he brought with him a reputation of vast wealth and of being thoroughly oriental in education, customs of life, and manners of thought, and he soon became the most celebrated personage of the season. On 26 Sept. 1840 he married the Hon. Mary Anne Jervis, third daughter of Edward Jervis, second viscount St. Vincent. He was elected in the liberal