Is it a blessing or a curse to live during one of the most tumultuous times in the history of a country? A curse, surely, unless perhaps you are someone like an exceptionally gifted artist whose talents fortuitously lend themselves to capturing the ethos of the time. William Dobson (1611 – 1646) is that kind of figure. And in the documentary The Lost Genius of Baroque, Waldemar Januszczak gives a much deserved look at this this virtually forgotten artist who helped capture some of the people and spirit of the First English Civil War.
The biographical details of England’s “first native genius [of painting],” as Januszczak describes him, are scant. His father was a man of considerable means, though his profligate lifestyle meant that young William ultimately had to seek out employment at a young age.
The outlines during this early stage of Dobson’s life are relatively clear: he undertook a couple of multifaceted apprenticeships and also began to closely study a variety of artists. But how Dobson developed into such an extraordinary painter, and whether or not he was taught by Van Dyck, is largely speculative. Indeed there is much about his life that scholars would love to know — but, alas, a scarcity of documentation and evidence thwart any kind of robust biography.
Considering this, an hour documentary on Dobson may seem like a doomed-to-fail endeavor (and indeed there are some scenes of rather inane filler and pomp). But the bulk of the documentary provides an informative picture of William Dobson and the violent political whirlwind that created the artistic milieu in which he painted his many extraordinary portraits.
In setting up Dobson’s story, Januszczak explains the personality and habits of England’s second Stuart monarch: Charles I. A man of refined tastes and a champion of the arts, Charles was a lavish spender who did not hold back on acquiring art. (It is perhaps no surprise that a variety of financial issues plagued nearly all of his long reign.) But Charles expenditures on art did, unquestionably, bring some of the most magnificent European art into the King’s collection: works by Raphael and Titian, Veronese and Rembrandt, and many others. Importantly, it also brought to England the likes of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck.
The latter artist played an important part in Dobson’s path to becoming the King’s painter. Born in Antwerp, the immensely talented Flemish artist eventually became court painter for Charles I (as he had also been, though briefly, for James I). But his death in 1641 allowed for a new artist to enter the King’s court — and that artist was none other than the young William Dobson.
The timing of Van Dyck’s death and Dobson’s subsequent role as the King’s portraitist meant that his career was to become intimately connected with the roiling events of 1642 and beyond. It is Dobson’s role in this capacity that makes him such an important artist, and why Januszczak describes him as “the man who put a face to the English Civil War.”
From 1642-1646, working from the King’s residence in Oxford, Dobson painted a range of figures while he served as “artist in residence to the Royalist cause.” Many of Dobson’s portraits show high-status indivuals and people of the King’s retinue. But he also painted many other figures, including soldiers, poets, writers, and diplomats, as well as his wife and even a self-portrait (an uncommon act for an English painter before Dobson’s time).
Viewers are shown a wide selection of these portraits, and importantly they encompass all periods of his short career, which allows us to get a sense for how Dobson’s artistry developed and changed. The most informative parts of the film, however, are the half dozen occasions when Januszczak hones in on a specific painting. Januszczak is eager to highlight the abundant merits of Dobson’s work; indeed it’s a contention put forward in this documentary that Dobson has been unfairly forgotten and neglected. His portraits, contends Januszczak, are some of the most important in British art.
Like so many supremely talented artists, William Dobson had the unfortunate fate of dying very young, at the ripe age of 36. Scholars don’t know the cause of death, but Dobson’s final months occurred in London and in a state of poverty. It was a life cut undeniably short. But Dobson’s artistic output remains with us, and it provides a portal through which we can intimately glimpse the spirit and people of England as the country wracked itself in the horrors of civil war.
Spectatio 