Peckham

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.

This drypoint depicts the south end of Peckham Hill Street, a South London suburb not far from the posher Blackheath, where Dodd lived from 1904 till his death. In 1915 it presented a semi-rural aspect, and while London's relentless urban development has changed its character considerably, a fair number of the early to mid-19th century 2-3 storey stock brick terraced buildings - and nearby houses - have survived, and the neighbourhood has enjoyed Conservation Area status since 2011. The landmark dominating Dodd's print is St Chrysostom Church (1813) with its splendid lanterned tower, an addition of 1885. Sadly this edifice was demolished in 1963 due to severe dry rot. At street level Dodd includes three horse-drawn carriages and a number of shoppers in this charming slice of local history.

See:

'Historic Peckham',http://www.peckhamvision.org/wiki/Conservation_Area

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

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    April 2018