Frank Dobson was born in central London and grew up in Clerkenwell. His mother was Alice Mary Owen and his father, who was also named Frank Dobson, was a commercial artist who specialized in bird and flower designs for greeting card companies.

Frank Dobson moved to Newlyn in Cornwall, where he met Augustus John who used his influence and contacts to enable Dobson to stage a one-man show at the Chenil Gallery in London in 1914.

At the start of World War Two, Dobson and his second wife, whom he had married in 1931, moved to Bristol, where a large retrospective of his work was held in March 1940. Frank Dobson lived in the city throughout the Bristol Blitz and like several other 20th Century artists painted the ruins of churches destroyed in the bombing.

Dobson was appointed head of sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 1946, a post he held until his retirement in 1953. For the Festival of Britain site on the South Bank of the Thames in 1951, Dobson created London Pride.