Painter, printmaker, teacher, administrator and curator, born in Belfast. He obtained his master’s degree from Cambridge University and studied painting under Harold Gilman at the Westminster School of Art. From 1926–31 Dickey was professor of fine art and director of King Edward VII School of Art, Armstrong College, Newcastle upon Tyne. He was then staff inspector of art, Ministry of Education, 1931–57, but from 1939–42 was secretary of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, in 1942, on the recommendation of Kenneth Clark, joining the committee, while returning to the Ministry, until the war’s end. Eventually Dickey became first curator of The Minories, Colchester. The Imperial War Museum holds extensive wartime correspondence involving Dickey and a copy of a television documentary on war art in which he appeared.