John Dawson Watson was born in Sedbergh, which was then in Yorkshire, on 20 May 1832, the eldest son of the solicitor, Dawson Watson, and his wife, Mary (née Bragg). His siblings included the painter, Thomas James Watson. Displaying a precocious artistic talent, he produced quite a large number of drawings even before the age of seven. He was educated at Sedbergh Grammar School, under the Rev John Harrison Evans, and while there was helped to develop his artistic skills by Caroline Bella Green, the wife of the second master and a daughter of Julius Caesar Ibbetson.
In 1847, at the age of 15, Watson left Sedbergh, in order to train at Manchester School of Design.
In 1851, he moved to London, to study both at the Royal Academy Schools and under Alexander Davis Cooper. However, he exhibited at the Royal Manchester Institution for the first time in that year, showing The Wounded Cavalier, and soon returned to Manchester, living at 4 Norfolk Street. From there, in 1853, he sent his first exhibit to the Royal Academy of Arts, a painting of Cooper’s studio, which included portraits of himself and others, including Cooper. In 1856, he sold several works to John Miller, a Liverpool tobacco merchant and art collector. When these were seen by the painter, Ford Madox Brown, he invited Dawson to exhibit at his house in London. In 1857, he became an active member of Manchester’s literary and artistic Letherbrow Club.
On 23 November 1858, Watson married his cousin, Jane Dawson Edmondson, at Giggleswick, Yorkshire. Two years later they settled in London, at 8 Oval Road, Camden Town, and he began to establish himself as an illustrator, as well as a painter. He achieved this most signally in 1861, with Routledge’s critically acclaimed edition of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, in which his drawings appear via the engravings of the Dalziel brothers. Beginning to illustrate both books and magazines, he contributed to such titles as Once a Week, Good Words, London Society and The Graphic, and became one of the most dependable and popular black and white artists of the decade.
Regularly exhibiting both oils and watercolours at leading London venues, Watson was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1864 and a full member in 1869. He would be elected an honorary member of the Royal Watercolour Society of Belgium in 1876.
The eldest of Watson’s five children, Dawson Dawson Watson, was born in 1864. (He would make his name in the United States as an Impressionist painter.) In the following year, the growing family moved out of London, to Milford, in Surrey. Close by, at The Hill, Witley, lived Watson’s sister, Frances, who had become the second wife of the painter and illustrator, Myles Birket Foster. Watson painted frescoes and designed furniture for the Fosters’ home. On occasion, he also designed costumes and furniture for the stage, most notably for Charles Calvert’s production of Shakespeare’s Henry V at the Prince’s Theatre, Manchester, in 1872.
Though he seems to have maintained a studio at 8 Berners Street, north of Oxford Street, during the mid 1870s, Watson settled his family back into London in 1877, at 22 St Edmund’s Terrace, Regent’s Park. Four years later, they moved a short distance to St John’s Wood, living at three different addresses between then and Watson’s death in 1892: Longsden, 19 Marlborough Hill; 7 Eaton Terrace (by 1887); and 3 The Villas, Eaton Terrace (by 1891). However, he spent increasing amounts of time at Conway, in Caernarvonshire,
where he became a founder member of the Royal Cambrian Academy (in 1881), and from where he was in easy reach of Manchester. In 1877, he was honoured with an exhibition and dinner at Manchester’s Brasenose Club. He was also elected a member of the Society of British Artists in 1882. He died at his home, Plas Uchaf, Lancaster Square, Conway, on
3 January 1892.
His work is on show at the Castle Hotel, Conwy, and represented in numerous public collections, including the V&A.
Further reading
Jan Reynolds, ‘Watson, John Dawson (1832-1892), H C G Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol 57, pages 632-633
