Dawson Dawson-Watson (1864–1939) was a British-born Impressionist painter who became famous in 1927 for winning the largest cash prize in American art, the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibition.

He was one of the first members of the famous Impressionist colony in Giverny, France and was a prominent teacher in Hartford, Connecticut, St. Louis, Missouri and San Antonio, Texas.

Dawson-Watson was a versatile artist, and made significant contributions to the American Arts & Crafts Movement, first in Boston, Massachusetts and then in Woodstock, New York.

He worked under a number of prominent teachers including Carolus-Duran (1837–1917), Léon Glaize (1942-1932), Luc-Olivier Merson (1846–1920), Aime Morot (1850–1913) and Raphael Colin (1850–1916).

The American painter John Leslie Breck (1860–1899), who was one of the first Americans to settle in Giverny with Louis Ritter (1852–1896), Willard Leroy Metcalf (1858–1925) Blair Bruce (1859–1906), Henry Fitch Taylor (1853–1925), Theodore Robinson (1852–1896) and Thedore Wendel (1859–1932), invited Dawson-Watson to live in Giverny, the spring after its founding.

He collaborated with the artist Thomas Meteyard on a small publication titled the Courrier Innocent and was part of the Bohemian community.

When his parents died, he received a small inheritance and moved back to England where he and his family lived for a number of years.

[12] In Quebec he grew to know the American Tonalist painter L. Birge Harrison (1854–1929), who was instrumental in his employment at Byrdcliffe, the famous utopian Arts & Crafts Colony in Woodstock, New York.

In 1926 it was announced that the oilman Edgar B. Davis would sponsor an art competition that was intended to draw attention to the beauty of the Texas Hill Country.