Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue

Illustrator and painter; born 20 May 1832, at Sedbergh, Yorkshire. Trained at Manchester School of Design 1847 and Royal Academy Schools 1851 whilst apprenticed to Alexander Davis Cooper; exh. RA from 1853; settled in London 1860; established as an illustrator of note after drawings engraved by George and Edward Dalziel appeared in a Routledge edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1861); also worked for journals of the day including Good Words, Once a Week, London Society and the Graphic (from 1870) and occasionally as a theatrical costume designer; as a narrative figurative painter, his work was influenced by contact with Ford Madox Brown and the Pre-Raphaelites, but he was also close to (Myles) Birket Foster, who married his sister, and whose charming scenes of country life he emulated; elected to the Society of Painters in Watercolour 1869; founder member of the Royal Cambrian Academy after moving to Caernarvonshire 1884; Henry Boddington (brewer and art collector) became an important patron; died in Conwy on 3 January 1892.

According to the Dalziels, Watson’s art ‘was no trouble to him; and this was the root of a certain indolence shown in his later productions which […] were far inferior to what might have been expected from his natural powers.’ [1] Ill-health was also partly responsible for this, and when he died aged 59 his reputation had already faded.

Magdalene Keaney

Referencesback to top

Hacking 2000
Hacking, J., Princes of Victorian Bohemia: Photographs by David Wilkie Wynfield, exh. cat., NPG, London, 2000.

Houfe 1979
Houfe, S., ‘An Artist of Country Manners’, Country Life, 13 September 1979, pp.768–9.

Maas 1984
Maas, J., The Victorian Art World in Photographs, London, 1984.

Marks 1894
Marks, H.S., Pen & Pencil Sketches, 2 vols, London, 1894.

Reynolds 1984
Reynolds, J., Birket Foster, London, 1984.

J. Reynolds 2004c
Reynolds, J., ‘Watson, John Dawson (1832–1892)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004; online ed., September 2004.