26. Francis Dodd

The British painter and engraver Francis Dodd was a particularly talented portraitist.¹ He was not only able to capture his sitters’ physiognomy, but their personality as well. Among the portraits he etched and printed in drypoint, those of his artist friends are considered his finest.²

The drypoint Looking at a Picture is an intimate portrait of the painter Susan Isabel Dacre (1844-1933).³ Isabel Dacre, sometimes called “Aunt Susan”, was a friend and collaborator of Dodd’s.⁴ They worked closely together, first in Manchester, then in London, between 1897 and 1911, when the latter married.⁵ Dacre, who was Dodd’s senior, greatly encouraged the youth. He portrayed her several times; in particular, we can recognize her in many of his paintings, drawings and prints.

Here we see her seated, looking at a framed work resting on a chair. She is so absorbed in studying the sheet that she appears oblivious to her surroundings, giving the scene a captivating intensity. The subject’s relaxed attitude and lively eye are characteristic of Dodd’s work: he was particularly fond of representing his models in a contemplative moment. Isabel Dacre is in mourning clothes, with a wide hat, its veil cast back, just like in another drypoint – The Garden Door⁶ – which was completed two years later.

Dodd belongs to the second generation of the Etching Revival artists in the United Kingdom. This movement, which arose in the second half of the nineteenth century, sought to bring original prints back into fashion. For these artists, Rembrandt was the great model, on account of his mastery of the technique, but also his experiments with different papers and inking.

After initially working mainly as a painter, Dodd made his first drypoint in 1898, although his print production only truly began in 1907, the date of our work. The artist went on to use this technique regularly: it consists of cutting lines directly in the matrix with a sharp point. This spontaneous manner enabled him to make these very free portraits, especially because Dodd often finished his prints by working directly on the plate after the model.⁷

This copy of Looking at a Picture bears the number nine. Dodd, who usually did very few prints, would have made only ten prints of the plate. In fact, the drypoint technique allows only a limited number of impressions, due to the rapid wear of the narrow, shallow grooves incised in the metal, under the pressure of the passages under the press.

Here Dodd made the best use of the rough burr – particles of metal deposited along the groove that retain the ink, characteristic of the passage of the drypoint – to suggest the texture of Isabel Dacre’s mourning clothes, giving the whole image a velvety aspect. RSB