Arthur Gilbert

Biography

Arthur Gilbert Frederick Williams was the fourth son of Edward Williams. He was born the same year as Queen Victoria, in the Stoke Newington district of London on 19 December 1819.

This painter of canvases in the grand and solemn manner was a gentle, amiable person and a most devoted family man. His wife, Elizabeth, whom he married at St Martin in the Fields in 1843 died five years later of tuberculosis, leaving him with their daughter, Kate.

On 28 June 1854, at the Parish Church, Barnes he married Sarah Godfrey, the daughter of a clerk. Their only son Horace Walter Gilbert was born the following spring, on 6 April 1855. Both of Arthur’s children inherited a talent for art and later exhibited their work.

Arthur Gilbert had addresses in Weybridge and Hammersmith, but lived for seventeen years in Lonsdale Terrace, Barnes, very near to the home of his father and several of his brothers.

In 1873 he moved to Redhill and from there to De Tillens, a large house in Limpsfield, Surrey. This was Gilbert’s home for many years, including a considerable time after the marriage of H. H. Gilbert, whose work contains some very fine watercolours of this house.

Arthur Gilbert apparently suffered from rather poor health, but survived to the age of 75.