The son of Emil Carlsen (1853-1932), Dines Carlsen was born in New York City on 28 March 1901. Naturally, he studied painting under his father, who had taught at the National Academy of Design since 1891. When Dines was only seven, his father took the family to Europe. Meanwhile, Emil was being represented by Macbeth Galleries and his works sold easily. At the age of eleven, Dines journeyed again with his father back to Europe, to England and the Virgin Islands. William Merritt Chase purchased a painting from the precocious Dines, some time between 1910 and 1915.
By 1915, teen-aged Dines had already begun exhibiting at the National Academy, where he would show fifty-nine works through 1949. Dines won the Third Hallgarten Prize at the NAD in 1919 and the Second Hallgarten Prize four years later. Young Carlsen exhibited four times at the Art Institute of Chicago, at the Corcoran Gallery (1916-26) and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1916-33). The Corcoran has his still-life called The Brass Kettle (1916), which they purchased. In 1929, Macbeth Galleries organized a two-man show for Emil and Dines Carlsen. Dines Carlsen had homes in Falls Village, Connecticut and in Summerville, South Carolina. He died in New York City in 1966.