Dabo consistently gave 1868 and Detroit, Michigan, as his date and place of birth, however, it has recently been discovered that this was an intentional misstatement in order to obscure his family's clandestine immigration to America from Canada which occurred in 1871; apparently his father had some troubles in France that they wished to elude.
Dabo was brought up in Grosse Pointe near Detroit. He received a sophisticated education in the classics, religion, and architectural decoration from his father, Ignatius Scott Dabo, who had taught esthetics at the University of Nancy in France. Upon the death of his father, Dabo came to New York where he apprenticed with the stained glass firm of J. & R. Lamb, and in 1884, had some training under John La Farge.
After only a year in New York Dabo went to Paris where he worked for a firm of church decorators, and studied at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, at the Acad‚mie Julian, and with Puvis de Chavannes. He then toured Germany and Switzerland, before settling in Italy for a period of study of the Renaissance masters. He next went to Nancy, where he studied color theory with the physicist, Emile Lauge; by 1888 he was in London where he came under the influence of Whistler.
Upon his return to New York in 1890, Dabo settled in Brooklyn and began to receive commissions for decorative work. Among these are murals and window designs for St. John the Baptist in Brooklyn, 1895 and 1902; murals on the life of Christ for Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church also in Brooklyn, 1903; decorations for the Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library at Watertown, New Jersey; and for the Chapel of Jesuit Retreat, Monroe, New York, 1926.
During this period Dabo painted moody landscapes that were heavily influenced by the nocturnes of Whistler, and expressed his deep religious feeling for nature. His work was widely exhibited in Europe and New York throughout his life. As early as 1905 a one-man exhibition of his work was held at the National Arts Club, New York. He was active in the group that organized the 1913 Armory Show, and contributed to the exhibition. In New York, Goupil's gallery gave him an exhibition in 1917, and in the 1920s the Ferargil Gallery regularly showed his paintings.
During World War I, Dabo served abroad with the AEF Corp of Interpreters. Between the world wars, Dabo was active in both New York and Paris as a painter, lecturer and writer. In 1932 he organized an exhibition at the Roerich Museum, New York, of portraits of European and American nineteenth and twentieth century artists (including one of himself by Benjamin Eggleston) for which he wrote the exhibition catalogue. For the three years prior to the German invasion of Paris at the outbreak of World War II, Dabo had been painting in Paris. He left in September 1940, and upon his arrival in New York formed a committee to send aid to artists in occupied France.
Dabo served as vice president of the Roerich Museum and president of the Brooklyn Society of Artists. His brother, Theodore Scott Dabo, was also a painter and worked in much the same style as did Dabo.
