Montague Dawson was bnorn in Chiswick, London. Early in his life he and his family moved to Smugglers’ House on Southampton Water, so he had every opportunity to indulge an interest in ships. Although he never went to art school, he inherited a flair for painting and in about 1910 joined a commercial art studio in Bedford Row, London, where he worked on posters and illustration.

At the outbreak of the First World War Dawson joined the Royal Navy and it was as a naval officer in Falmouth that he met Charles Napier Hemy, who had a powerful influence on his work. During this time he supplied illustrations, normally in monochrome, for publication in the Sphere. After the war he set up as a painter and illustrator, concentrating on historical subjects and portraits of deep-water sailing ships, usually in a stiff breeze and a high sea. His work quickly earned him a reputation as the "king of the clipper-ship school."

From the early 1930s Dawson lived at Milford-on-Sea in Hampshire and exhibited occasionally at the Royal Academy between 1917 and 1936. In the Second World War he again worked for the Sphere, supplying them with pictures of events of the war. He exhibited regularly at the Society of Marine Artists’ exhibitions between 1946 and 1964 and was an elected member; he was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.