Anchor Inn, Greenwich

Francis Dodd (1874-1949), portrait painter, landscape artist and printmaker, was born in Holyhead in Wales, the son of a Wesleyan minister. He trained at the Glasgow School of Art alongside his better-known contemporary, also represented in Te Papa's collection, Muirhead Bone, who married Dodd's sister. At Glasgow, Dodd won the Haldane Scholarship in 1893 and then travelled around France, Italy and later Spain. He returned to England in 1895 and settled in Manchester, becoming friends with the leading modern architet Charles Holden before moving to Blackheath in London in 1904.

During World War I in 1916, he was appointed an official war artist by Charles Masterman, the head of the War Propaganda Bureau. Serving on the Western Front, he produced more than 30 portraits of senior military figures, many of which are in Te Papa's collection in the form of postcards. However, he also earned a considerable peacetime reputation for the quality of his watercolours and portrait commissions. He was appointed a trustee of the Tate Gallery in 1929, a position he held for six years, and was elected as an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1927 and a full Member in 1935. From 1911 Dodd lived at Arundel House in Blackheath, South London, until he took his own life in 1949.

<em>Anchor Inn, Greenwich</em> is a late drypoint, and shows no fall-off in quality. It depicts the wharf, pub and moored boats on the River Thames at Highbridge, East Greenwich. Getting the masts and rigging of sailing vessels looking right was a technical challenge to printmakers. Whistler, Tissot and now Dodd pull off the task with aplomb. 

Research on this print has however yielded a significant art historical discovery, for which Anthony Cross, Rob Powell and Julian Watson of the Greenwich Historical Society must be gratefully acknowledged. The inn that Dodd depicts is not the Anchor, but the Crown & Sceptre, which was demolished in 1936, two years before the date of the print. (Dodd would have had little difficulty in drawing from photographs, or just as likely, from memory). Why he got the title wrong is anybody's guess; as a near local from Blackheath, he should have known better. Equally intriguing is the fact that he drew straight on to the copper plate, resulting in the impression being a reverse of the (former) reality. It seems likely that Dodd himself was responsible for the mistaken title: it is described thus by the British Council and Bonhams, the auctioneers. Dodd also depicted the nearby Trafalgar Tavern on Crane Street, where expat Kiwis on their OE may be discovered  pulling the pints!

See: Wikipedia, 'Francis Dodd', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Dodd_(artist)

Dr Mark Stocker  Curator, Historical International Art  April 2018