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Henry Raeburn Dobson was a Scottish portrait and landscape painter from Edinburgh who was active in Edinburgh and Brussels (Belgium) from 1918/1920 until 1980. His father Henry John Dobson (1858–1928) and his brother Cowan Dobson (1894–1980) were genre and portrait painters. His portraits are mainly painted in oil, while his landscape paintings are mainly painted in watercolour.
Henry Raeburn Dobson, who was to become a fine society portrait painter, was born into middle-class family with roots in Kirkcudbright, Scotland. His father, Henry John Dobson (1858–1928)10, was himself a Scottish genre and portrait painter from Dalry. His grandfather, Thomas Dobson, was a wool merchant in the town of Kirkcudbright. It is said in the family that there was a Dobson wool mill in Dalry. Perhaps this mill was owned and run by Thomas.
Henry John did not maintain the family tradition of running the family wool business. To become a painter he sacrificed his inheritance since family legend has it that Thomas Dobson disowned his son.[citation needed] Henry John's whole life would be marked by financial difficulties.
Henry John married Jeannie Charlotte Hannah Cowan on 17 September 1890, in Dalry, in the district of Kirkcudbright. To exercise his art (and because there were more opportunities for paintings portraits in the Scottish capital) they later moved to a house in Edinburgh. Raeburn was born there at 9, Merchiston Crescent in a house that is stated to have had at least "7 rooms with one or more windows". At that time, the family had an in-house servant, Barbara Sutherland.
As a portrait painter, Henry John did not have much success. He transitioned into Scottish genre paintings in the style of Thomas Faed (1826–1900), Henry Wright Kerr (1857–1936) and David Wilkie (1785–1841). These scenes were especially popular in the United States and Canada, where they were often printed on tin biscuit boxes. Because Henry John often had difficulties paying the rent, the family moved quite often. It is said that he actually lived from hand to mouth and that it was mainly due to the household skills of his wife Jeannie that the family survived.
Raeburn was the youngest of Henry John Dobson's four children. The oldest child was Thomas Stanley, born in 1892 and named after his grandfather. He was known as Stanley. He became an actor, but also worked for an art dealer named Robertson in London. David Cowan Dobson was born in 1894 and was known as Cowan Dobson, a well known London Society portrait painter. Although he painted some very fine portraits of well known men, like Earl Attlee, Earl Beatty and Harold Wilson, he mainly portrayed "fashionable London ladies". The name Cowan was given to David after his mother's family name. The only sister was Louisa Rankin. She was born in 1896 and was also known as Louie. She had an intense family bond with her younger brother and – together with mother Jeannie – looked after him her whole lifelong.
Raeburn was given the name of Henry Raeburn, after the famous eighteenth-century Scottish portrait painter, Sir Henry Raeburn (1756–1823), whom his father admired hugely.
Despite Henry John's financial precariousness, he sent his children to good local schools. Little is known about Raeburn's school days. His first years of formal education were spent at James Gillespie's High School, in Edinburgh. He and Louisa were enrolled together, on 5 September 1906. The family then lived at 4 Glengyle Terrace, Edinburgh.
Raeburn left Gillespie's on 18 July 1911 to attend the prestigious George Watson's College, also in Edinburgh. The family attached much importance to good education. At that time, the school was based near Lauriston Place in the centre of Edinburgh. Only in 1932 George Watson's College moved to present building in Colinton Road, outside the city centre. He was admitted to George Watson's College on 26 September 1911. He left the school in July 1917, to attend (according to the school's archives) Art College.
In his last year at the College (his fifth) he studied English, History, Mathematics, Latin and French. His best subjects were the latter two. Drawing was then only taught to boys up to the fourth year. His art teacher at Watson's was Ralph W. Hay In art teaching he was a pioneer of the Modern Movement in Scotland. He was one of the first to break away from the traditional colourless nineteenth-century way of teaching drawing. He was all in favour of colour, decoration and the expression of fantasy. This may explain why Raeburn's portraits – unlike his brother's portraits – are more colourful.
There is one odd circumstance which has been noted in his records. Henry left the school without warning in July 1912 to attend Mr. A. Miller Inglis' School for Boys, Maidenhead College, Maidenhead, Berkshire. Mr. Inglis was a cousin of his father. The note states "…but probably not to be there long as mother is missing him being at home."25. He did indeed return quickly to Edinburgh and returned to George Watson's College, but this time he stayed at a private boarding house run by Mrs. Imrie, who catered for George Watson's College pupils.
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