Waldemar Januszcak TV - John Aubrey - Tate Museum online -
William Dobson ... the English Civil War: if Dobson hadn’t been there and put a face to his era the truth about these dramatic times would have gone unrecorded. Waldemar Januszczak, Baroque! From St Peter’s to St Paul's III, BBC 2013
Make it tangible. Give it flesh ... What Art’s really good at: capturing the moment, taking you there ... The English Civil War can be brought back to life, and felt again. Waldemar Januszczak, The Lost Genius of British Art: William Dobson, BBC 2011
A painter of deep and real talent. Who was there ... His name is William Dobson ... The first truly great British painter. Our first native genius. ibid.
This is such a revolutionary image ... Charles [I] lavished all this money on art ... Dobson gives us a small and troubled man, so nervous, so unsure. These are sensitive insights. ibid.
When History swallowed up William Dobson it swallowed up his past as well. ibid.
His art makes a beeline for character and truth, for plainness, bluffness and even ugliness. ibid.
Dobson’s pictures tell us so much about the people who were here. ibid.
I think it’s my favourite self-portrait in the whole of British art. ibid.
For Dobson too the end game is at hand. You can actually see his art changing. Its mood darkening. The canvases growing smaller, scratchier, gloomier. ibid.
Before he died Dobson was imprisoned for debt. ibid.
The most excellent painter that England has yet bred. John Aubrey
His style developed and finally deteriorated so that it is possible to gauge an approximate chronology for most of his works. His lack of sound training and his technical weaknesses were offset by his evident pleasure in the use of paint and his natural instinct for colour, enhanced by his powers of observation. While it must have become increasingly difficult to obtain materials in wartime Oxford, the failure of the royalist cause and personal disillusionment must have contributed to this clear deterioration of technique. Dobson’s powers of observation and characterisation remained unimpaired, however, and the fragility of the later paintings adds to their air of melancholy. Tate Museum online