Jennifer Dickson was a vocal advocate for female artists, for artists’ rights and for a municipal gallery in Ottawa.Dennis Toff
When Jennifer Dickson was an emerging artist in London in the 1960s, a journalist attended her first major show and pronounced: She was one of the “prettiest girls” in modern art.
This sexist condescension marked Ms. Dickson, who often identified it as the day she became a feminist. She went on to build a lifelong career as a successful visual artist and was known not only for her haunting photographs of gardens and palaces but also as a vocal advocate for female artists, for artists’ rights and for a municipal gallery in Ottawa, the city she eventually called home.
She died there, at the Élisabeth-Bruyère Hospital, on Jan. 18 at the age of 88.
Ms. Dickson was an artist from an early age. She was born on Sept. 17, 1936, in the town of eMkhondo (then known as Piet Retief) in eastern South Africa, the second of John and Margaret Dickson’s six children. She fell ill with polio as a child and when her mother provided drawing materials to occupy the patient, her talent became immediately apparent.
Her parents felt there was no future for her in apartheid-era South Africa and the family was supportive of her decision to study art. An adventurous spirit who had already travelled to the United States to represent South Africa at a Girl Scouts event, she left for Britain at the age of 16 and stayed with relatives there while working to support herself. She attended Goldsmiths’ College art school at the University of London from 1956 to 1959 and then became an associate at the Paris graphics workshop Atelier 17, studying under master printmaker Stanley William Hayter.
Ms. Dickson had begun her art career as a printmaker and sculptor, but in her Ottawa years she increasingly turned to photography.JOHN McNEILL/The Globe and Mail
It was in Paris that friends introduced her to a British accountant named Ronald Sweetman. Reputedly, they did not hit it off right away, but Mr. Sweetman cooked meals for Ms. Dickson and she repaid him in art. Eventually, they realized it was a match.
The couple married and returned to Britain but decided they would do better for themselves by emigrating. They tried Jamaica briefly before landing in Montreal in 1969. Mr. Sweetman’s career expanded into management consulting and in 1975 they moved to Ottawa for his work with the federal government. They were married for 56 years, until his death in 2018.
Ms. Dickson had begun her art career as a printmaker and sculptor, but in her Ottawa years she increasingly turned to photography, relying on Mr. Sweetman’s knowledge of the field: Both his father and grandfather had been prominent photographers. She was a meticulous technician but also a romantic photographer, producing carefully composed prints of historic buildings and ruins, and gardens full of flowers and statuary, that she hand tinted. Despite her obvious mastery of her medium, she was annoyed whenever anyone asked her technical questions.
“She hated, was almost insulted, when people would ask her about what camera or lenses she used. From her perspective, the artist/photographer was the source of the creativity, not the specific tool being used,” her son, Bill Sweetman, said. “The last three decades of her work became about celebrating beauty.”
Ms. Dickson sometimes felt she was a 17th- or 18th-century woman plopped down in the 20th century and her photography reflected a deep engagement with the architecture and landscaping of previous eras and other cultures.
“She always felt out of place and out of time. She felt: ‘Am I in the right family, the right country, the right place?’ So much of her work deals with her trying to make sense of the world and her place in it,” he said.
Ms. Dickson was a meticulous technician but also a romantic photographer, producing carefully composed prints of historic buildings and ruins, and gardens full of flowers and statuary, that she hand tinted.Justin Wonnacott/Supplied
Ms. Dickson was not religious, although she was proud of her Anglican heritage because that church had opposed apartheid. But she was intensely aware of the spiritual or otherworldly and claimed to be a white witch, casting spells to stop children bullying her son at school or to help an infertile friend get pregnant.
“I would describe her as someone attuned to coincidence, magical finds and serendipity. She listened to her instincts and acted on them,” Mr. Sweetman said. “We had a running joke; we called her the witch doctor. She loved that.”
Ms. Dickson may sound fey but in truth she was a tough personality who could be both passionate and practical as an advocate for causes she cared about, including supporting the rights of artists through Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des artistes canadiens.
She also lobbied hard for the creation of the Ottawa Art Gallery, arguing that local artists in a large city were not being served by the National Gallery of Canada and needed a municipal institution. Her last show was held there in 2021 and featured photographs of churches, synagogues and mosques shot in England, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Turkey and Morocco from 1979 to 2008, offering through the shared beauty of these spiritual spaces an unspoken lesson in ecumenism. The gallery celebrated her achievements at a special ceremony in 2023; she was also named to Britain’s Royal Academy in 1976 and to the Order of Canada in 1995.
Ms. Dickson was in poor health in the last years of her life, suffering from heart problems among other ailments, but she was determined to enjoy a Caribbean vacation much delayed by the pandemic.
“She wanted to experience the ocean one last time,” Mr. Sweetman said.
Mother and son travelled to the Dominican Republic in early January for a successful holiday, but Ms. Dickson was hospitalized the morning after she returned and died four days later. She leaves her son, Bill; daughter-in-law, Yvonne Bobrowski; and her two surviving siblings, Jo Tyers and Ian Dickson.
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