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Clarence Dobell

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clarence Mason Dobell (1836–1917) was a British artist and illustrator.

Life

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Clarence Dobell was born in Cheltenham.[1] He was the son of John Dobell, a wine merchant, and Julietta Thompson, a daughter of Samuel Thompson (1766-1837).[2] His older brothers were the poet Sydney Dobell and the doctor Horace Dobell, and a younger sister Mary married the painter Briton Riviere.

The family lived in Charlton Kings, where they were friends of the writer Dinah Craik. Clarence accompanied her on the visit to Tewkesbury Abbey which apparently inspired her to write John Halifax, Gentleman;[3] according to family tradition, several of the novel's characters were based upon members of his family.[4] Dobell illustrated Craik's 1860 collection Our Year.

As a student at the Academy schools, Clarence Dobell introduced his future brother-in-law Briton Riviere to pre-Raphaelite painters.[5] He was a contributor to Good Words from its inception in 1860, and an occasional contributor to Once A Week.[6] He had a studio in Grafton Street, London, and was a friend of John Pettie, whose studio was nearby.[7] He, his brother Sydney and Dinah Craik were close friends of W. J. Linton and his wife Eliza Lynn Linton.[8]

In May 1868 he married Emily Duffield.[9] A son, Walter Duffield Dobell, was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford.[10]

In later life, Dobell seems to have later entered the family wine business: he and his brother Cyrus were listed as owners of Cheltenham's Restoration Inn at the end of the century.[11]

Works

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  • (illus.) Our Year: A Child's Book in Prose and Verse by Dinah Craik, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1860.
  • Memoirs of Old Charlton Kings. A series of short papers written for the Charlton Kings Parish Magazine, 1896, 1898

References

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  1. ^ S. M. Ellis, Sydney Dobell - The Poet of the Cotswolds, The Bookman, No. 424, Vol. LXXI (January 1927), pp. 201-10
  2. ^ Life and Letters of Sydney Dobell, 1878, I.64ff. Gordon, Alexander (1898). "Thompson, Samuel" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 56. London: Smith, Elder & Co. .
  3. ^ Mitchell, Sally (1983). Dinah Mulock Craik. Twayne Publishers. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-8057-6850-3.
  4. ^ Familiaris, "John Halifax", Letter to The Times, 21 April 1926.
  5. ^ 'Death of Mr. Briton Riviere: A Popular Animal Painter', The Times, 21 April 1920
  6. ^ White, Gleeson (2009). English Illustration: The Sixties' 1855-1870. Echo Library. pp. 33, 45–6. ISBN 978-1-84830-190-0. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  7. ^ Martin Hardie (1908). John Pettie, R.A., H.R.S.A. A. and C. Black. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
  8. ^ George Hamilton Cunningham (1927). London: being a comprehensive survey of the history, tradition & historical associations of buildings & monuments, arranged under streets in alphabetical order. J. M. Dent & sons ltd. p. 315.
  9. ^ Edmund Sydney Williams, 1917-1891: Autobiography. Quoted by Don Shelton, Riviere, Annette Louise - portrait of Nora Selina Dobell Williams
  10. ^ Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonionses
  11. ^ Restoration Inn
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