William Charles Thomas Dobson, R.A., R.W.S. 1817-1898

Dobson was one of the group of English painters who sought to raise the standard of religious art in the 1850s and 1860s. He had been born in Hamburg but his artistic education took place principally in London, where he drew in the British Museum and was enrolled in the Royal Academy Schools. In 1835 he was introduced to Sir Charles Eastlake, who inspired him to believe that art should treat edifying and spiritually uplifting themes. Eastlake's influence may have helped Dobson gain an appointment as headmaster of the Birmingham School of Design in 1843, a position he held until he set out for Italy to study Renaissance art. Sometime after his return from Italy Dobson entered a subject entitled Lamentation to the third competition for schemes of decoration for the Place of Westminster in 1847. From 1842 onwards Dobson was a frequent exhibitor of biblical and religious subjects at the Royal Academy. Dobson's 1853 Academy exhibit The Charity of Dorcas was so much admired by Queen Victoria that a variation on the theme entitled The Almsdeeds of Dorcas was commissioned and given as a present to Prince Albert.

Towards the end of the 1850s the want of an indigenous school of religious painters was increasingly expressed. James Dafforne, in his notes on Dobson in the 1860 Art Journal (pp. 137-139), advocated the painter as one who was 'animated by the highest spirit of Art' and whose talent he summarized as follows: 'the mind of Mr Dobson, and his style of painting, are adapted to the requirements of the time; his imagination can take in a wide expanse of pure and noble thoughts, without treading on the verge of eccentricity; his compositions are effective and graceful, and his colouring brilliant, even in a school where this quality is a distinguished feature.' However, Dafforne remained on guard against the Germanic tendency in English art, which in the late 1850s was regarded with increasing suspicion. He was concerned that Dobson had recently made a long stay in Dresden and advised his readers to 'look with some anxiety to see what effect has been produced by his residence there.' The present painting, which appeared at the Royal Academy just a year after Dafforne's comments were published, is however essentially a modern-life or genre subject of a kind familiar to visitors to the mid-century Royal Academy. Its religious significance lies in the engraved quotation of Christ's words to the Woman of Samaria as described in Chapter IV of the Gospel of St John on the pediment of the fountain. Dafforne's adoption of such a discreetly didactic form of art, quite different to his previous reconstructions of biblical events and use of Raphaelesque compositions, seems to represent his deliberate adoption of a type of painting which would be understood and appreciated by an English public.