Dawson Dawson-Watson (1864-1939)
English-born painter Dawson Dawson-Watson brought the impressionist style to the American Midwest. After studying in Paris and Giverny, Dawson-Watson immigrated to America, settling in New England. He became director of the Hartford Arts Society and subsequently he moved to Brandesville, Missouri and finally to San Antonio, Texas. Drawing upon the Barbizon and Impressionist aesthetics, during his years at Giverny (1888-1893) Dawson Watson painted peasant subjects with vivid colors and expressive brushwork as well as landscapes with soft, atmospheric effects. Later in his career he would become a celebrated painter of Texas wildflowers and cacti.
Born in London, England on July 21, 1864, Watson, whose father was a painter and illustrator, was raised in the British artists’ colony of Saint John’s Wood. His first art lessons were from his father and his father’s friend, the American expatriate painter Mark Fisher. Following his family’s move to Wales, Dawson enlisted for six months with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers but returned soon after to his artistic studies. After exhibiting his paintings as a teenager at the Royal Academy in London, Dawson-Watson left for Paris in 1886 with the encouragement and support of the painter Henry Boddington. There he continued to study art with Emile Carolus-Duran, Léon Glaize, and Raphael Collin and was introduced to the American artist John Leslie Breck. Breck invited Dawson-Watson to Giverny, where Claude Monet was painting.
Although Watson claimed that Monet was not the main reason for his trip to Giverny, he certainly admired the artist. He remarked that “as a student I had three particular gods in paintings: My father who was one of the most brilliant men of his time, Mark Fisher, and Claude Monet.” (1) While at Giverny, Dawson-Watson refined his understanding of impressionism and, after moving to America in 1894, compiled his ideas in an unpublished treatise. Despite Monet’s presence at Giverny, Watson’s writing extolled the English painters Joseph Mallord William Turner and John Constable, whom he considered to be two of the first impressionists. He also, according to traditional impressionist theory, believed in painting directly from nature, outdoors and in natural light. He stated with conviction that “I think it is taking a great liberty with nature to touch her indoors when she was commenced out. It is very difficult to make people understand the difference between the handling of color indoors [and] out. Out of doors the light comes from every quarter [and] brings with it all sorts of reflected color.” (2)
Watson’s paintings of Giverny often employed dappled, hazy or soft light and depicted scenes of country life, drawing from the impressionist and Barbizon traditions. His paintings of field laborers such as Harvest Time, 1891 (Pfeil Collection) are reminiscent of Millet’s Gleaners (1857, Musée du Louvre, Paris). However, an important distinction between Watson’s work and Millet’s is that Watson’s paintings do not carry the social commentary that Millet’s did. According to William Gerdts, “ Dawson-Watson avoids any overriding sense of deprivation or desperation. His laborers work in the full light of day, not in the early evening as do Millet’s. The light and atmosphere lend the scene a pleasant quality that denies any discontent or social isolation such workers might feel.” (3)
Despite his attraction to the Giverny landscape, Dawson-Watson rarely settled for too long in one location. In 1893, on the recommendation of the American artist James Carroll Beckwith, he left for the United States. Supporting himself on his painting, he moved to Boston and then to Hartford, Connecticut to direct the Hartford Art Society. Four years later, after receiving a small inheritance, he returned to England but, unable to make a living off his art, he moved to Canada with the hopes of finding a position in an art school there. Although the job never materialized, he stayed for three years until American artist Birge Harrison encouraged him to join a new artist colony that was being founded in the Catskills. He then moved to New York and taught at Byrdcliffe in Woodstock. Beginning in 1904, Dawson relocated to the mid west to take a job at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University, where he taught for eleven years. When he left the job in 1915, he split his time, for many years, between St. Louis and San Antonio Texas, pursuing important artistic projects in both locations. In St. Louis he was art director of the 1920 St. Louis Industrial Exhibition and in San Antonio was director of the San Antonio Art Guild.
In 1926 he moved permanently to San Antonio where he began to paint Texas landscapes and enter Texas Wildflower competitions. The following year he won the national award in the first Davis Competition for his painting of cacti entitled The Glory of the Morning, 1927 (Luling Foundation, Texas). Dawson-Watson would go on to win first and fifth prizes in the competitions and to have solo exhibitions at the Witte Museum in San Antonio in 1928, 1922 and 1935. Before his death on September 3, 1939 Dawson-Watson also created several murals under the New Deal Civil Works Administration. These included the paintings entitled Meditation, for Jefferson Senior High School, and The Open Book of Nature for a high school in Wichita, Kansas.
Throughout his career Dawson-Watson exhibited widely in Europe and America. His works were shown at the Paris Salon, the Exposition Universelle in Paris, the Royal Academy, London, the Royal Canadian Academy and in many U.S. exhibitions including the St. Louis Worlds Fair in 1904. His paintings are in the collections of numerous museums including the San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas, The Stark Museum of Art, Texas, The Saint Louis Art Museum, and the Witte Museum, Texas.
1. Dawson-Watson to Emily Grant Hutchings, quoted in Emily Grant Hutchings, “Art and Artists,” St. Louis Globe Democrat, July 12, 1913. Cited in William H. Gerdts, Masterworks of American Impressionism from the Pfeil Collection (Alexandria, Virginia: Art Services International, 1992). 103.
2. Cited in William H. Gerdts, Monet’s Giverny: An Impressionist Colony (New York: Abbeville, 1993), 61.
3. William H. Gerdts, Masterworks of American Impressionism, 103.
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