Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dawe, Henry Edward
DAWE, HENRY EDWARD (1790–1848), painter and mezzotint engraver, who was a younger son of Philip Dawe, also a mezzotint engraver, was born in Kentish Town, near London, 24 Sept. 1790. He was taught engraving by his father, and like his brother, George Dawe, he also studied in the schools of the Royal Academy. In 1824 he sent to the exhibition of the Society of British Artists, then just founded, two engraved portraits, and in 1830 he was elected a member. Between 1824 and 1845 he contributed seventy-two works, many of them engravings, to the annual exhibitions in Suffolk Street, and exhibited also a few pictures at the Royal Academy and British Institution. Among his exhibited paintings were: ‘The Coronation of George IV’ (British Institution, 1828), portrait of Miss Phillips as Juliet (Royal Academy, 1829), portrait of William IV (British Artists, 1832), ‘Lear and Cordelia’ (1834), ‘Christmas Fare’ (1835), ‘Wreck of the George the Fourth, Convict Ship’ (1836), ‘The Miser alarmed’ (1838), ‘Fisher-boys on the Sussex Coast’ (1839), ‘Burns and Highland Mary’ and a portrait of Prince Albert (1840), ‘Blind Man's Buff’ and ‘The Orphan's Friend’ (1842), ‘John Anderson my Jo,’ ‘The Philanthropist,’ and ‘The Detected’ (1844), ‘The Holiday, or Granny in a Rage’ (1845), and several other portraits and subject pictures. Some of his works were engraved and became popular. His own plates in mezzotint were successful, and included ‘Christ's Agony in the Garden,’ after Giovanni Bolognese; ‘The Fortune-Tellers,’ after Sir Joshua Reynolds; ‘St. Genoveva,’ after Cattermole; ‘The Gipsy,’ after Sir David Wilkie; ‘The Bee's Wing,’ after M. W. Sharp; ‘The Disbanded Soldier,’ after H. J. Richter; ‘The Escape of Mary Queen of Scots, from Loch Leven Castle,’ after H. J. Fradelle; ‘Sir Arthur, his Daughter, and the Beggar,’ after Camille Roqueplan; and portraits of Mrs. Siddons as the ‘Tragic Muse,’ after Sir Joshua Reynolds; John Kemble as ‘Hamlet,’ after Sir Thomas Lawrence; Lord Eldon, after C. Penny; Horatio, seventh earl of Orford, and Dr. George Birkbeck, after R. J. Lane; William IV, both as Duke of Clarence and as king, after his own paintings, and a large number of Russian officers, after the works of his brother. Dawe was one of the engravers employed by Turner upon the ‘Liber Studiorum,’ after his rupture with Charles Turner; the four plates which he engraved for this work being ‘Rivaulx Abbey,’ ‘Mill near the Grande Chartreuse,’ ‘Twickenham—Pope's Villa,’ and ‘Bonneville, Savoy.’ He resided for many years in Bartholomew Place, Kentish Town, but about 1842 he removed to Windsor, where he died 28 Dec. 1848.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists of the English School, 1878; Rawlinson's Turner's Liber Studiorum, 1878; Catalogues of the Exhibitions of the Royal Academy, British Institution (Living Artists), and Society of British Artists, 1824–45.]