Harold Dunbar was an impressionist landscape painter, art instructor and writer who was born in Brockton, Massachusetts in 1882 and died there in 1957. He resided and had studios in Waverly, Brookline, Belmont and Chatham (MA) and was highly recognized for his sumptuous impressionistic landscapes of New England.

Dunbar took art lessons from Edmund C. Tarbell in Boston and considered Tarbell his "mentor" and he probably was influenced by the pleinaire paintings of Frank W. Benson and Phillip Leslie Hale. He exhibited at the Boston Art Club (1905-1907); the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (1906, 1913, 1917-23, 1931); the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. (1914); the American Watercolor Society (1917) and the Art Institute, Chicago. He was the Editor of the Cape Cod Beacon and director of Chatham summer art classes (1915-1950s).

Dunbar's work is represented in collections at Radcliffe College; State House, Montpelier, Vermont; Beuchner Hospital, Youngstown, Ohio; Empire Theatre, New York City; Museum of the City of New York; Municipal Collection, McPherson, Kansas; Little Theatre, Chatham, MA and elsewhere.