1891-1930. A modernist painter whose exacting personal style incorporates elements of cubism, precisionism, and Asian art, the New York-born Dickinson spent much of his short adult life in Paris. In addition to his course of study at the Art Students League and the Académie Julian, Dickinson's influences included Picasso, Braque, and Cézanne. He embraced their use of faceted forms and flattened space, and although his works are infused with abstraction, the objects and scenes he painted typically remained recognizable.

Whether architectural subjects, landscapes, or still lifes, Dickinson's works exhibit an almost Asian delicacy of handling. They are marked by a skillful balance between light and dark (although he often employed a rich range of color), and ambiguous spatial relationships between objects. Like the precisionist painters with whom he was associated, Dickinson painted architectural and industrial subjects, including the factory buildings, grain elevators, bridges, and ramparts that symbolized the era. In addition to images of Paris and the New York area (particularly the Harlem River waterfront), Dickinson produced works based on his travels, which included Nebraska, Quebec, and Spain, where he died unexpectedly at age 41.