Francis Dodd

Who was Francis Dodd?

Francis Edgar Dodd RA was a British portrait and landscape artist and printmaker.

Born in Holyhead, Anglesey, Wales, the son of a Wesleyan minister, Dodd trained at the Glasgow School of Art, winning the Haldane Scholarship in 1893 and travelling around France, Italy and later Spain. He settled in Manchester, becoming friends with Charles Holden, before moving to London.

During World War I, in 1916, he was appointed an official war artist by Charles Masterman, the head of the War Propaganda Bureau. Serving on the Western Front, he produced more than 30 portraits of senior military figures.

However, he also earned a considerable peace-time reputation for the quality of his watercolours and portrait commissions. He was appointed a trustee of the Tate Gallery in 1929, a position he held for the next six years, and was elected as an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1927 and a Member in 1935.

He lived from 1911 until taking his own life in 1949 in Arundel House in Blackheath, London SE3.