Get a Dobson Certificate of Authenticity for your painting (COA) for your Dobson drawing.

For all your Dobson artworks you need a Certificate of Authenticity (COA) in order to sell, to insure or to donate for a tax deduction.

Getting a Dobson Certificate of Authenticity (COA) is easy. Just send us photos and dimensions and tell us what you know about the origin or history of your Dobson painting or drawing.

If you want to sell your Dobson painting or drawing use our selling services. We offer Dobson selling help, selling advice, private treaty sales and full brokerage.

We have been authenticating Dobson and issuing certificates of authenticity since 2002. We are recognized Dobson experts and Dobson certified appraisers. We issue COAs and appraisals for all Dobson artworks.

Our Dobson paintings and drawings authentications are accepted and respected worldwide.

Each COA is backed by in-depth research and analysis authentication reports.

The Dobson certificates of authenticity we issue are based on solid, reliable and fully referenced art investigations, authentication research, analytical work and forensic studies.

We are available to examine your Dobson painting or drawing anywhere in the world.

You will generally receive your certificates of authenticity and authentication report within two weeks. Some complicated cases with difficult to research Dobson paintings or drawings take longer.

Our clients include Dobson collectors, investors, tax authorities, insurance adjusters, appraisers, valuers, auctioneers, Federal agencies and many law firms.

We perform William Dobson art authentication, appraisal, certificates of authenticity (COA), analysis, research, scientific tests, full art authentications. We will help you sell your William Dobson or we will sell it for you.

William Dobson was a portraitist and one of the first notable English painters, praised by his contemporary John Aubrey as “the most excellent painter that England has yet bred”. Dobson was born in London the son of a decorative artist, and was apprenticed to William Peake and probably later joined the studio of Francis Cleyn. He is believed to have had access to the Royal Collection and to have copied works by Titian and Anthony Van Dyck, King Charles I chief painter. The color and texture of Dobson’s work was influenced by Venetian art, but Van Dyck’s style has little apparent influence on Dobson. Van Dyck himself discovered Dobson when he noticed one of the young artists pictures in a London shop window. He introduced Dobson to the King, who had Dobson paint himself, his sons and members of the court.

When Van Dyck died in 1641, Dobson probably succeeded him as sergeant-painter to the King, though proof is lacking. During the English Civil War Dobson was based at the Royalist centre of Oxford and painted many leading Cavaliers. His portrait of the future Charles II as Prince of Wales at the age of around twelve is a notable baroque composition, and perhaps his finest work. He also painted the Duke of York, Prince Rupert of the Rhine and Prince Maurice.

Around sixty of Dobson’s works survive, mostly half-length portraits most of them dated from 1642 or later. The thick impasto of his early work gave way to a mere skim of paint, perhaps reflecting a wartime scarcity of materials. After Oxford fell to the Parliamentarians, in June 1646, Dobson returned to London. Now without patronage, he was briefly imprisoned for debt and died in poverty at the age of thirty-six.

Dobson is regarded as a talented painter with a fine sense for color and good powers of observation. However, an entirely English training such as Dobson’s could not be first rate in the early 17th century and he had technical weaknesses. There are examples of Dobson’s work at Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery in London and at several English country houses. The most comprehensive study of Dobson and his work is William Dobson, 1611-1646 an exhibition catalogue written by M. Rogers for a 1983 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Still wondering about an English painting in your family collection? Contact us…it could be by William Dobson.