Francis Edgar Dodd

1874 - 1949

Britain Dodd was born in Holyhead, north Wales, the son of a Wesleyan minister. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art under Fra Newbury and Archibald Kay, winning the Haldene Scholarship in 1893, which enabled him to travel in France, Italy and Spain. He settled in Manchester (1895-1905), becoming friends Muirhead Bone, who was to become his brother in law. He moved to London and in 1916 replaced Muirhead Bone as Britian's official war artist on the Western Front.

He earned a considerably peacetime reputation for the quality of his watercolour and portrait commissions. Exhibiting extensively a the New English Art Club, Royal Academy and Royal Watercolour Society, he was appointed a trustee of the Tate Gallery in 1929 and was elected to the Royal Academy in 1935. He lived in Blackheath and took his own live in 1949. His work is held in many British public collections, include that of the Tate Gallery, in South Africa and Australia. A Retrospective Exhibitions of his work was held in Cheltenham in 1944 and a Memorial Show as held at Bluecoat School, Liverpool in 1949 and at the South London Art Gallery in 1950.