William Dobson (1611-1646), Portrait painter.
When van Dyck died in 1641, Dobson inherited his mantle as the leading painter of the king and his Royalist followers during the first English civil war. Dobson is said to have copied van Dyck's work as part of his training and, in this self-portrait, his pose emulates van Dyck's self-portrait, NPG 6987. Dobson was, however, much more than a skilled copyist: he had a very distinctive style, characterised by broader handling of paint. Both self-portraits were acquired by the writer Richard Graham by the early eighteenth century; he is thought to have commissioned the frame for Dobson's portrait to match that of NPG 6987. The portraits remained in the same collection until the van Dyck self-portrait was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 2014.