The Funeral of a Viking

The Funeral of a Viking, painted in 1893 and held by Manchester Art Gallery, is one of the most dramatic Victorian history paintings in the tradition of large-scale Romantic spectacle. Dicksee depicts a Viking funeral ship set ablaze as a burial rite, with a fallen warrior sent to the afterlife surrounded by fire on the open sea. Victorian Britain had a complex fascination with the Norse and Viking past: Scandinavian mythology and history were popular subjects following the publication of Carlyle's early essays on Northern heroism and the general romantic recovery of the pre-Christian North. The subject combines the Victorian taste for the historically remote and spectacular with a meditation on death and heroism that was entirely compatible with contemporary attitudes. Manchester Art Gallery's collection reflects the robust Victorian industrial city's investment in large-scale ambitious painting as a civic and cultural statement.

Oil on canvas on a large, ambitious scale with Dicksee's confident academic handling. The painting exploits the drama of firelight against darkness and sea, using warm oranges and reds against the cool blues and greys of the night water and sky.