Born in Boulogne, France, Geoffroi moved to London at the age of fifteen and studied art at South Kensington School of Art. In Kelly's Directory for 1856 he was one of five 'artists' listed for the whole of the County of Cornwall, and described himself as a Professor of Drawing and Painting.
He was first Master of the Penzance School of Art, founded in September of 1853 and started initially in rooms above the Princes Street Hall. By the end of 1853, the popular classes had moved to Regent House at Voundevour Lane, Penzance. In Views and Likenesses (1988), about the work of photographers in Cornwall and Scilly in the years 1839-1870, Charles Thomas suggests that Geoffroi, even if not a photographer himself (possibly an early amateur), was open to displaying 'a fine collection of photographs' amongst the pupils' display for their annual show in 1854.
In 1866 he lived in Voundeveor Lane next to the School, and served additionally as master of Truro School of Art, visiting weekly. To this dual post, he also held the post of Visiting Art Master at Truro School. With great efforts from his wife Elizabeth ('Lazzie') and their children, money was raised by subscriptions locally and abroad to construct new purpose-built premises at the top of Morrab Road, which opened in March 1881. This was one of the venues used by Newlyn artists to exhibit work prior to the construction of the Passmore Edwards Gallery (Newlyn Art Gallery, opened in 1895), and was part-time employment for many years for stalwarts of the art circles of the area.
He was the father of Harry Malcolm GEOFFROI.
Referenced by Whybrow and Tovey as a visitor to St Ives in September of 1891 and joining the Golf Club with the other artists in December of that year. He exhibited in the Show Day at St Ives in March 1892.
Exhibiting between 1911-14 at the RHA, he gave the address of Eversham, Stillorgan, Co. Dublin. Nothing further is known at this stage.
Jennifer George lives and works in Saltash. She obtained a BA (Hons) in Studio Ceramics at Falmouth College of Art in 1997, and continued her studies at the Royal College of Art in Kensington, London. Currently she is working towards a Masters in Contemporary Art Practice at the University of Plymouth. She employs a wide variety of media to express, with humour and irony, our obsession with fashion, and its interaction with the domestic.
Wyn George was born in Wales. He had a natural affinity with the rugged Celtic landscape of the south west peninsula, especially Cornwall, the subject and inspiration of his work. He exhibited with Newlyn and St Ives Societies of Artists.
Wyn George was a student at Cardiff School of Art from 1927 to 1931 and obtained a teaching qualification at the Central School in London. He undertook various teaching posts before serving in World War II as a navigation officer in the Royal Navy. This experience provided the source of some of his best post-war painting. From 1948 to 1974 he was Art Master at Devonport High School for Boys. He worked from a studio at his home in Ivybridge, Devon. He and his wife, Beryl, had two children. Beryl died in 1998.
During the 1950s Wyn George carried out two major public commissions: the mural in Plymouth Guildhall, and a mural for the children's library in the Central Library in Plymouth.
Herbert Tidmarsh George was a student of John Noble BARLOW, with whom he worked in Lamorna in the winter of 1906. He was born and brought up in Clerkenwell, London, the son of John Bellamy George, who described himself as an artist in woven fabrics and carpet designer, and his wife Elizabeth. Herbert had studied art previously at South Kensington and at Bushey, and in 1891 was living and working with his father in Islington. He married Edith Wilkinson in the same year and was living in Hindhead, Surrey.
He is first recorded in Cornwall in 1906, when he sold the work 'Landscape with Sheep' at Newlyn, and also exhibited 'Mousehole' at the RCPS exhibition that year. He indicated that he had studied in both Newlyn and St Ives and so will have spent time at the Forbes School as well as with Barlow.
His first success at the Royal Academy was in 1907 with 'In the Vale of Lamorna' and the following year he exhibited 'The Woods of Rosemorran from Keneggie'. He continued to visit west Penwith over the course of the next few years and was staying at Cliff House Hotel at the time of the 1911 census.
By 1915 he had moved to Hampstead, and then by 1926 to Gomshall, Surrey. He remarried Ethel Mary Loftus in 1931 and continued to exhibit until at least 1939. However, very few of his paintings have surfaced. Ethel and he were living at Havant, Hampshire at the time of his death in December 1957.
Esther George was born in Salop, studying at Birmingham School of Art, Chelsea Art School and Herkomer's at Bushey.
Tovey provides a photograph of the artist working in open air (p56), and in the 1924 Show Day at St Ives she exhibited a portrait of a lady and a child playing with coloured balloon balls. She was married to the artist Ernest Borough JOHNSON.
The artist lived at Hindhead and Gomshall, Surrey, and studied at South Kensington, Herkomer's at Bushey and Newlyn, under Stanhope FORBES, and in St Ives under John Noble BARLOW.
He was working in the Lamorna valley in 1905, and in 1906 exhibited and sold Landscape with Sheep at NAG's Summer exhibition.
His sending-in addresses are listed as Hindhead, Surrey (1906), London (1915) and Gomshall, Surrey (1926).
Recent correspondence (2012) reveals two watercolours indicating places where Herbert George painted, being Aston Tirrold, Berkshire [now in Oxfordshire] and the Cole Kitchen Farm, Gomshall.
A fisherman by trade, George was born in Mousehole and did not take up painting until he was in his seventies. Using childrens' paints and bits of paper and card, it was his meeting with Alethea GARSTIN that brought his prolific talents to the fore. He was the grandfather of the artist Jack PENDER.
The artist came to St Ives in 1997 and employs a working studio overlooking Porthmeor Beach. He acknowledges the work of one of the earliest influential painters and teachers of the St Ives colony, Julius OLSSON, and paints large canvasses, of the sea in its many moods. He depends, like his predecessor, on direct observation en plein air, though working subsequently in his studio.
His art studies were at Warrington School of Art and at Goldsmiths' College, London. For some years he taught art in schools around Inner London. His awards since coming to Cornwall include the Fine Art Trade Guild Award (2005) and the Daler Rowney Best British Painting Award more recently. His work locally is shown by the Waterside Gallery, St Ives.
Corinne Gerrard works from a studio in Trencrom, Lelant Downs. She is a ceramicist working mainly in stoneware, though she also uses raku and porcelain clay.
Nick Gibbard's work reflects a a life lived in London, Oxford, New York and his return to his roots in Cornwall. After obtaining a degree in Technical Illustration from Cornwall Technical College, he specialised in illustrating aerial maps. His first map was of Falmouth which, after 30 years, has been updated, and is the official free town guide, displayed in public locations in the town.
His working studio is the Marine Gallery in Falmouth.
Mark Gibbons was born in Lyme Regis, Dorset into an RAF family. In 1972 he graduated from Hull University with a BA (Hons) in Philosophy and Psychology. Following university he travelled extensively but returned to live in Devon to pursue painting full-time. During the 1990s he tutored painting courses in Tuscany and Alderney.
He has had work commissioned for President Mitterand, and in 1994 Devon County commissioned one of his paintings to be given to the French on the anniversary of the D-Day landings.
In 2003 Gibbons moved to Trewen near Launceston, where he continues to paint and keep bees.
An artist who exhibited at St Ives is identified twice in Victorian Painters (Woods), and the two might be the same person although currently this is unknown. One Miss Edith Gibson is said to have fl 1882-6, and the other Edith M Gibson is given the dates 1885-91, and both find the artist exhibiting two works at SS (with differing titles), and one work at the RA in 1886, with another at the RA in 1891 (titles unknown).
Johnson &Greutzner identify only one artist of this name, Edith M Gibson who exhibited from 1882-1918 with a busy exhibition schedule to her credit. It is probably this person who caught the eye of the St Ives Times in 1915. Her career to that date is noted from 1882 when her address was in Dublin, then London (1883), prior to becoming an Associate of SWA in 1886.
Born in 1827 in the Aran Islands, Galway, Ireland where his Scillonian father, James, was stationed as a Coastguard, John and his mother returned to St Mary's on his father's death in 1840, opening a store in Hugh Town. From time to time John took a berth at sea, as he had done before his father's death, and did not marry his wife Sarah Gendall until 1855. Their sons Alexander Gendall and Herbert John were born in 1857 and 1861, and around 1860 the Gibsons moved to Penzance.
John Gibson perhaps acquired his first camera sometime in the five years prior to the move to Penzance; between sea voyages he taught himself to use it, perhaps building his experience by taking portraits. The Richards family, Penzance photographers over several generations, knew the Gibsons, and the present Mr Richards is certain that John Gibson, after he came to Penzance in 1860, was in some fashion apprenticed to Robert Preston.
Despite a gap in their ages (Preston was younger by eleven years) the two men had much in common. In about 1865, John and Sarah Gibson returned to Scilly where they opened a general shop, and by 1870 their son John was firmly in business as a photographer in Penzance. In 1879 this was exchanged for a branch in the centre of the town, at No 10 Market Jew Street; not far from Preston's own establishment at No 23, it became a great attraction for visitors.
See Frank GIBSON (1929-2012).
Beverley Gibson lives in Millbrook, on the Rame peninsula. She exhibits with Drawn to the Valley.
Known always as Frank, the photographer was part of the fourth generation of the phenomenal family of photographers outlined in the entry for John GIBSON in this index. Frank was the eldest son of James Gibson and from him in 1985 he inherited the business and the photographic archive of glass plates and film negatives built up in their thousands since the 1850s.
His obituary in the Times Register states 'He was every bit as fearless as his great-grandfather in his quest for the right angle, light and position -- once flying to photograph the helicopter relief of Bishop Rock from a light plane hovering over it at stalling speed.' His love of the Scilly, its geography, beauty and history, shone from his work whether it was for business or art's sake, and many were reproduced on postcards, as well as commissioned for magazines and books.
He studied at Launceston College, and learned his trade by working for Tom Corin, a photographer in St Austell. He married a Cornish girl, Marie Boxer who became his life-long collaborator. The couple had three daughters, and one of these continues to work in the family business.
Frank was born on November 4, 1929 and died on July 8, 2012, aged 82.
Hilary Jean Gibson graduated from St Martins School of Art in London in 1979 with a BA (Hons) in Graphic Design. During the 1980s and 1990s she worked as a freelance illustrator in editorial and advertising. She moved from Essex to Brighton in 1980, taking an Art Teacher's Certificate in Education at Sussex University. She has been an art tutor for the Field Studies Council since 1998. In 1994 she obtained a Certificate in Printmaking from Brighton University. She has worked with Tate St Ives since 1995, delivering talks, tours and practical workshops.
Gibson moved to Cornwall in 1994, and completed an MA in the History of Modern Art & Design at University College Falmouth three years later. This was followed by an MA in Illustration : Authorial Practice (2010). As part of the course, she self-published a book about Godolphin National Trust near Helston.
Her work has been included in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition on two occasions, and at the Mall Galleries as an associate member of the Federation of British Artists, National Society of Painters, Printmakers & Sculptors. She was commissioned by 'Artists and Illustrators' magazine to write a piece about JMW Turner. In 2017 she undertook a commission for the National Trust involving six large artworks, to be hung in the house at Trelissick Gardens.
She became a member of STISA in 2023.
She lives in Hayle and has been a tutor at the St Ives School of Painting since 1995. She welcomes illustration commissions.
On leaving Wimbledon School of Art, Mary was encouraged by her former teacher, Robert Baker, to establish a pottery for the owner at Sudbury in Suffolk. Although this was a wonderful opportunity, she had always wanted to work with Bernard LEACH, but in the early 1940s the Leach Pottery did not encourage students straight from Art School, preferring instead apprentices. Mary was not discouraged; after spending three months at Lake's Pottery in Truro, she came to spend a day with Bernard and eventually started work at the Leach pottery in 1944.
She spent a year living in Pottery Cottage where she met many of Bernard Leach's friends, including Barbara HEPWORTH and Patrick HERON, before moving to accommodation on the harbour. She was trained by Margaret LEACH to pack the three-chamber climbing kiln, and learned to throw and glaze.
In 1947 she left to help start a pottery in Surrey along with Michael CARDEW, but this was not successful, and in 1949 she joined Michael at his pottery in Wenford Bridge in Cornwall. Mary now lives and works in Devon, making and selling her ceramics at the Buckfast Abbey's monastic shop.
Andrew Giddens is a painter working from Cornish Art Studio in Perranuthnoe, near St Michaels Mount.
Cornish subject. No further information is known to date about this artist.
The first 'Cryséde' trainee, he joined in 1920 at the age of fourteen, and under Alec George WALKER's direction quickly showed great aptitude for printing, soon becoming proficient. By 1923, when the complex 'new' designs were introduced, he was doing most of the printing and was put in charge of the section when the firm moved to St Ives. His brother Lloyd GILBERT also became a silk printer.
Born in Hayle, Cornwall, the painter Dick Gilbert 'belonged to a coterie of Cornish-born and bred artists who proved a visually distinctive minority within the mid-century St Ives 'school'. These included Peter LANYON, Michael CANNEY, Margo MAECKELBERGHE, the potter William MARSHALL and before them the naive painters Alfred WALLIS and Mary JEWELS. [The Independent]
He served in the RAF and became a Leading Aircraftsman, and when he returned to St Ives, he became an exhibiting member of the Penwith Society and held solo exhibitions in London (Rawlinsky Gallery and the New Vision Centre Gallery). He attended the Regent Street Poly for a short period was essentially self-taught. But the strand of inspiration recalled from Cornwall was always present, with the topography of Hayle, Gwithian and the sands and dunes stretching to Godrevy with its lighthouse providing him with shapes and sweeps of movement in his work.
He undertook myriad jobs to make ends meet and to support his family, including waiting tables in St Ives, postman, lorry driving until finally he took up training to become a practitioner of the Alexander Technique. He went on to teach in Norway, Germany, Denmark, London and around Europe, settling in Finland with his fourth wife.
In 1997 he returned to Cornwall and to exhibiting his paintings locally, as his reviewer writes, 'in a sense coming full circle, this popular and warm character having followed his own distinctive path.' He died in Hayle on 22 December 2008.
The sculptor was born in Manchester and studied there, at the School of Art, before becoming a textile designer. Moving to Cornwall, she was greatly interested in the work of Barbara HEPWORTH, and became a pupil at the Penzance School of Art where she worked under Edward Bouverie HOYTON, Barbara TRIBE and John TUNNARD.
Her specialty became working in marble and soapstone, and her figures are often either newborn infants, animal and human, and also intertwining couples.
Her son is the sculptor Lawrence MURLEY.
Giles' work, Beach Mark, is listed in Ruhrmund's review of the NSA exhibition, 'Uncharted Landscapes', held at the Mariners Chapel Gallery (2011).