Frank Dobson was a British artist.
Dobson was born in London on 18 November, 1886. The son of a commercial artist, he showed early promise and won an art scholarship aged eleven. On leaving school at the age of fourteen he became a studio assistant to the sculptor William Reynolds Stevens. He then studied at Hospitalfield Art School in Scotland. His work was influenced by his exposure to the modernist art shown in Roger Fry’s landmark exhibition of 1910-11. The Artist spent many years in Cornwall, including Newlyn, where he shared a studio with Cedric Morris and first met Augustus John. After spending the First World War in the Artist's Rifles, he showed his first sculptures in Wyndham Lewis’s 'Group X' exhibition (1920). Over the years he moved from his early Cubist-inspired sculpture to a more lyrical style based on the female nude form. He also produced a series of notable portrait busts. His work was praised by Roger Fry as ‘true and pure sculpture’ and the critic Clive Bell described his Cornucopia as ‘the finest piece of sculpture which has been produced by an Englishman’ After World War II he was appointed professor of Sculpture at the Royal College of Art and awarded the CBE.
Collections include the Courtauld, London, and that of David Bowie.
