Old London Bridge Watercolour in Gilt and Gesso Frame

By the 1830s, J.J. Dodd was gaining a reputation as a topographical artist and engraver. He contributed illustrations for James Northcote’s Fables and was employed to design lithographs

for John Britton’s Descriptive Sketches of Tunbridge Wells in 1832.

When the young Princess Victoria visited Tunbridge Wells in 1835, she was presented with a specially bound volume of watercolours of the town painted by Dodd. His work was exhibited in the Royal Academy and at the Royal Society of British Artists. By 1838 he was in Paris, and some pencil drawings of French towns have survived from this period.

By 1843 Dodd had settled in Manchester and worked as a drawing master at a local school. From 1848 to 1850 he was a teacher of geometry, perspective, architectural and mechanical

drawing at Manchester School of Design, and continued to exhibit his own work. He married Harriet Binns, the daughter of a Stretford joiner, in 1850.

They soon left Manchester for North Wales and were listed in the 1851 Census as living in a house in Castle Ditch, Caernarfon. They had four children. Dodd was one of several engravers who produced editions of Hugh Hughes’ map of North Wales, caricatured as an old woman carrying a sack on her back, entitled Dame Venodotia alias Modryb Gwen.

Slater’s Directory 1858-59 lists Dodd as Architect and Surveyor, and was also described as drawing master to Lady Newborough. In about 1859, the Dodd family moved to Bangor. His reputation amongst local art collectors was well established by the 1860s.

In 1869, a Fine Arts and Industrial Exhibition was held at the Penrhyn Hall, Bangor, in aid of the building funds of St. Mary’s Church and the new school at Glasinfryn. Dodd was responsible for superintending the exhibition arrangements and the hanging of the pictures. About fifteen of his watercolours were shown, all on loan from well-known local middle-class and artisan families. His paintings were hung alongside examples of European high art borrowed from the collections of some of the most notable North Wales families, including Lord Penrhyn and Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. The exhibition included works by Canaletto, Gainsborough, Reynolds, David Cox and Thomas Creswick.