Henry Raeburn Dobson

Henry Raeburn Dobson, a high society portrait painter, was born into a middle-class family with its roots in Kirkcudbright, Scotland.

Henry Dobson married Jeannie Charlotte Hannah Cowan on 17 September, 1890, in Dalry, in the district of Kirkcudbright.

He transitioned into Scottish genre paintings in the style of Thomas Faed (1826–1900), Henry Wright Kerr (1857–1936) and David Wilkie (1785–1841).

In 1947, Raeburn had already returned to Edinburgh[20] and lived in Queen Street, before moving to Fettes Row, on the outskirts of the Georgian New Town of the Scottish capital.

[22] In the early 1920s, his elder brother Cowan Dobson, an official war artist,[23] had already settled in the British capital.

Raeburn, unlike his elder brother, was never as commercially successful as Cowan[citation needed]: neither in London, nor in Edinburgh, nor in Brussels.

In London, Raeburn lived in Thurloe Square and Cranley Place, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which were prestigious addresses, as was Earls Court Road.

In his biography of Henry Raeburn Dobson, Dr. Cabris refers to his marriage to Isabel Rae Smith Dawson.

I have a nice wee girl friend, daughter of the Prince de Faucigny-Lucinge, a Rothschild, and one of the oldest families in France.

I am having the usual difficulties to be expected painting an air marshal on holiday {the Air Marshal and Lady Coningham had left France for England}, but I will win in the end...."[31] His cousin Andrew Blackwood Dobson remembered : "…I do recall him telling me (or Dad) that he did follow in the front line RAF behind the lines into Europe, interpreting photo reconnaissance as the invasion advanced and that in his spare time he drew portraits of fellow officers in the mess.

I think it was through this activity that he met Belgians during the advance through Belgium...."[32] while another cousin Andrew Njal Dobson remembered especially the viewer and stereographs Raeburn had used during the war.

[36] She died from a heart attack at her home at 13, Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh on 2 April 1985,[37] only a few weeks before Raeburn's own death.

[39] But, besides an inscription on the reverse side of the first portrait of the Bishop of Bath and Wells stating that his address was at the Liberal Club in Edinburgh, no written proof about the latter has been found.

[42] In the early 1970s, when the Lodge was sold, Raeburn moved his studio from Polton to his one bedroom flat on the first floor of 5, Fettes Row, on the edge of Edinburgh's New Town, which he had bought earlier on.

[44] In April 1946 he wrote a letter to his mother from the house of a Madame Duchateau at the fashionable address of Avenue Jeanne, 52 in Elsene, Brussels,[45] telling that he was just about to furnish his painter's studio.

Mr. Marshall, whose portrait I started when I was over before heard only yesterday morning that his son, who had been missing for a year was actually shot by the Germans last spring.

He even arranged for his cousin Janette Dobson in 1955 to act as an 'au pair' to the family of H. Baron Carton de Tournai of Bonsecours, near Perluwez, Belgium.

I have had a store put in and have got an easel throne, chair, table on loan.…"[45] Since the end of the War, Raeburn would come every year to Belgium for three or four months, to look for and to work at his commissions.

But, as many of his customers refused to come to this ill-famed borough, Raeburn went to their homes and resided there for an extended period of time while painting the family portraits.

[citation needed] Shortly after the completion of the portrait of Kirsten Doughty (1980), Raeburn left his flat on the border of Georgian Edinburgh for "The Elms", a nursing home outside the city centre, run by the Church of Scotland.

He stayed there for several years, until he moved in his last days to Grange Care, a private nursing home for the incapacitated elderly, at 8, Chalmers Crescent.

[49] His remains were cremated and his ashes were adjoined to the grave of his parents, Henry John Dobson and Jeanie Cowan in Mortonhall Cemetery, on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

He left a testament, leaving his few goods mainly to Evelyn and some friends, while his house was sold to cover his debts and cremation.

For children he was a true entertainer: by impersonating different characters and performing magical tricks,[51] he would catch their attention during long sessions of portraiture.

Raeburn used often cheaper materials, which he bought at the art shop of John Mathieson and at Aitkin Dott Galleries (in Fredrick Street) in Edinburgh.

He was indeed befriended with the famous Chief Constable of the Lothian and Peebles Constabulary William Merrilees (who wrote The Short Arm of the Law, John Long Ltd, London, 1966) and painted two portraits of him.

On the reverse of the portrait of Count Wenceslas de 'tSerclaes is a small thank-you card from the Chief Constable, attached to the frame.

The thank-you card represented the two photographs of Merrilees in disguise, as printed in his book on page 32. and ordinary members of the general public.

When the jet-set did not want to take their way to the painter's studio, Raeburn had no reluctance to go and stay at the private homes and castles of his clients.

Although influenced by the 'Colourists', he refused to conform to the Modernist movement, while the politics of the Royal Academy made him rebel even more against this closed circle.