The Golden Age of Sauchiehall Street: March 1910 – Drawings at Annan’s Gallery, 518 Sauchiehall Street

The opening paragraph of an article on page ten of The Glasgow Herald, on Friday the 11th of March, 1910,

reads:

 

“The latest display in the gallery of Messrs T. and R. Annan and Sons (who have a reputation for the quality

of their art shows) is of local as well as artistic interest. It consists of drawings in water colour, pastel, and

drypoint by Mr Muirhead Bone and his accomplished kinsman, Mr Francis Dodd. Both received their early

art training in Glasgow, and both in an incredibly short space of time have won admission into select and

scholarly exhibitions. Mr Bone in his own metier is without a rival. No artist has a truer eye for the lights

and shadows of city life; his pencil has mirrored its complexity, its strenuous toil, its humour and its pathos.

He has given permanence to events of ephemeral interest. By his ‘demolitions’ he has built himself a lasting

reputation.”

 

The article continues with a discussion of the artist’s nocturnal scene, ‘Night Demolition in London,’ along

with other work, then moves on to Francis Dodd.

 

“The display of Mr Dodd’s art is a revelation. He is known as an accomplished worker in drypoint, and there

are several notable examples of his talent in that medium. He secures the soft quality of line and that velvety

bloom in his masses to which drypoint lends itself. There are several fine efforts in portraiture, ‘Walter Crane’

(that other master in line drawing) being conspicuously successful. … But it is in the series of water-colour

landscapes that Mr Dodd shows his broadening powers. … His power in chiaroscuro is shown in such

drawings as ‘The Hippodrome’ and ‘The Board School, Hammersmith,’ where light and shadow are perfectly

rendered. … These water colours, high in achievement, are perhaps more interesting still in revealing Mr

Dodd the possessor of a talent that may carry him far.”

 

An advertisement for the exhibition is on page eight of this edition of the Herald.

 

 

George Fairfull-Smith, October 2022.